


Please, Mr.Lostman

by Blucifer



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 90s AU, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Long-Distance Relationship, Love Confessions, M/M, Online Friendship, Oral Sex, Polyamory Negotiations, Rimming, Slice of Life, Snowballing, Sugar Baby Jisung, Threesome - M/M/M, everyone is a switch changbin just doesnt know it yet, implied/referenced age gap relationship, its an ICQ fic not a chatfic ok?, jisung isn't gross just eager, sadboi chan, they meet online, virgin changbin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-12-26 11:23:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 52,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18281648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blucifer/pseuds/Blucifer
Summary: Kissing Chan feels honest. Like he’s never had anything to prove in his entire life and won’t have to ever again. Caught perpetually between languid and urgent, Chan kisses like he’s begging Jisung for something so simple that he doesn’t even know how to ask.Changbin kisses him and offers a confidence that can be backed up a hundred times, but folds willingly to something sweeter and something softer. A stupid person would think that Changbin doesn’t kiss like a virgin, but that’s just not true. Changbin kisses him like he’s waited a long time, and wants him very much





	1. Please, Mr. Lostman

**Author's Note:**

> Stan Talent Stan the Pillows.

_July 12th, 1998_

Changbin has seen Hyunjin at the skate park every Wednesday and every Friday after his music theory class for _exactly_ eight weeks. He knows this for a fact because they met the first week of the semester, and midterms were finally over. Changbin has watched Hyunjin progress from meekly scooting around on a penny board, to cruising around the park. Sometime around week four he bought a full-sized board with too tight trucks. The painful _snap_ of the brand-new board was a harsh, but almost required lesson. Sometime around week six Hyunjin was able to grind on a rail.

Fast learner.

Changbin wishes he could say the same.

It’s not like he hasn’t poured on the charm, which comes in the form of his very best tricks, and an almost regular offering of half a matcha Kit-Kat and a swig of his boxed soju on Fridays.

Historically, Changbin’s been met with absolutely no sign of reciprocation.

But Changbin likes to punish himself. Keeps his lyrics fresh. A happy artist is a boring artist, right?

Like any other Friday, Hyunjin is there dropping down the ramp and haphazardly leaping back up to the other side.

Changbin is nothing more than sweaty palms and clammy skin. There’s a distinctive swelling feeling in his tongue and his throat akin to when he eats shellfish. This feeling, like any other Friday.

Fuck that.

Things are going to change, he can feel it.

After all, he’s wearing his lucky shirt. Ten years ago, he begged and begged for his dad to take him to a Boowhal show. His dad agreed if, and only if, he raised his grades. Ten years ago, Changbin went from one of the worst students in his class to the very best. Ten years ago, he got this shirt at the Boowhal concert.  

The faded gray garment has been burned a few times by cigarette cherries at shows. There’s a certain kind of symbolism…some kind of metaphor there, but he tries not to think about it too much. He cut the arms out and stretched them to big holes when he grew out and bulked up. Ten years ago, he got this shirt, but today he tacks on another memory.

He just perfected the heelflip, and if that doesn’t send the panties dropping nothing will.

Changbin loops around the edge, pops the board up onto the rail, and pivots sideways. When he focuses on his own chartreuse and black spray-painted deck he almost, but not quite, obscures his view of Hyunjin’s face.

But he can, and he does see. Hyunjin turns his gaze away from Changbin and toward the boy next to him. Tall, lanky, and dressed in a bright colored high school uniform, Hyunjin plants a kiss on him off kilter, half on the corner of his lips and half on his cheek.

Cool. 

Changbin doesn’t so much feel himself fall to the ground like a lead weight, or feel the _snap-burn_ in his arm so much as he is aware of being in the air one moment, and on the ground the next. He’s much more aware of the _whorl-click_ of the wheels turning as the board pitifully coasts on without him almost, but not quite drown out the sound of Hyunjin’s voice, “Changbin, are you alright?”

Well…that’s one way to move past losing half a KitKat draining the very last mouthful of soju from the spit covered mouth of an _Andong_ box.

Changbin looks down at his arm. For a moment it just feels like his clothes rub him the wrong way, or a fly is crawling across his skin.

“Changbin?”

Yep.

It’s broken.

* * *

 

_July 12 th, 1998  _

Chan always gets mail delivered to the school. The birthday card he sent his sister was delayed for a few weeks because of typhoon season. The care package his mother sent was a month late when their postman had a heart attack….No one picked up the mantle, Mr. Yoshida just delivered an endless backlog of packages and bills when he could get up and out of the house.

That’s just how it is on this microscopic island town.

Unlike when he gets things addressed to his house, the mail _usually_ shows up here.

Chan always gets the mail delivered to the school, but now? Now it feels so formal. Written on the label in _his_ handwriting is Chan’s name, and it makes his stomach feel sick.

But, it doesn’t stop him from taking a pair of cotton candy pink safety scissors from the mug filled with pens on his desk. Slowly, he drags the blade down the finger printed smudged, cat hair stuck, packing tape. When the dull scissors aren’t good enough, he uses his fingers to tear at the tape. Upturn the box, and spill out the contents, his whole world was sent parcel post via DHL.

There’s the exchange diary that Bam Bam _started_ as a joke. Gave Chan the line that it was just something he picked up watching anime. When he received Lisa frank tiger diary with a matching plastic lock, Chan played along, writing in it with his students’ lost gel pens and mechanical pencils. Twin tugs of excitement and relief threaten to tear him in two when he doesn’t see a purple scrap of yarn with the key tied to it anywhere in the box’s contents.

There’s small mountain of keychains Chan’s won from the arcade and the UFO catchers. Doraemon, and Domo-kun, and everything, everything _One Piece_ , because reading each chapter was something that they could do together despite the distance.

There’s a few Polaroids in the box too, a lot of images from when they traveled together in the summer before he left. They went to Thailand to meet BamBam’s family, and swear to god, that’s the only time he’s ever heard anyone call him by his given name. Then, they went to Australia to meet Chan’s family. Photos on the beach, and photos in his racecar bed at home mix together making one continuous memory.

These objects exist, persist, as tangible proof of something that barely even feels real now.

Like getting elbowed on the train, or cut off in traffic, it just seems rude.

But the mountain of trinkets and Polaroids are just pinches, little forehead flicks in comparison to the kick to his chest wrapped up in black fabric.  Chan picks up the t-shirt, shakes it out, and finds that the wavy white lines are covered in cat hair.

It smells like him, sour like sweat and sweet like citrus. The album cover screen printed on front, _Unknown Pleasures,_ makes him think about all the times they sat and listened to old vinyl records. In the old apartment, they’d have the volume cranked all the way down as to not disturb their neighbors. Without fail, every single time, angry stamping noises would come from below.

Fuck.

In the distance, the school bells ring. The first graders’ trail in from recess and down the hallway in a fury of laughter, shrieks, and agonized cries of, “I’m telling.”

He can be sad after he teaches class 1B shapes in English.

* * *

 

_July 12 th, 1998_

The boutique smells like cinnamon right now. Jisung’s pretty sure he heard his father, or his uncle, or some adult without much interesting to say, say that that’s a tactic stores use to get you to buy more. Pump in loud music, and nice smells, and bright colors, and override the senses…

Jisung pushes the thought from his mind because nice smells like that, secret girl smells like that, shouldn’t be faked. Gotta be the clerk’s perfume.

Cause even though they’re separated by a big tall counter, he’s pretty sure she’s the kind of girl who smells like _that._ Fresh blow out that morning, newly done nails, more products on her beautiful face than there are continents in the U.N…Good god he’s hoping she grants him sovereignty.

As it stands, all she does is go through the motions, not that she doesn’t make the motions look damn fine.

She takes his new hi-c colored Nautica sweat shirt and folds it neatly. Then she wedges it into a folded over piece of white tissue paper, making the whole thing look like an overstuffed sandwich. With her free hand, she snaps open a thick bag with an embossed label.

 “You work here cause you model the clothes right? Cause, uh girl—”

“Cash or check?” and to emphasize her disinterest, her bubblegum coated tongue pokes out of her mouth. She inflates the sugar band until it grows larger, and larger, and larger before it pops against her face.

Beneath the sugary snap her expression is flat.

The whole display makes Jisung’s mouth go dry and his skin itch. What now?

“Or card, cause…”

“Card, card card,” Jisung overcorrects, and spills his ID and his train pass, and a punch card for the boba shop onto the counter alongside his credit cards.

Perfect French tips pinch his gold card. She swipes it once, twice, “sir,” her voice is squeaky like new sneakers across a shiny tile floor. “Your card is declined.”

“No problem,” never mind the sweat on his palms. _Fuck._ It was just a _little_ argument, nothing major. “Try this one,” and he pulls out the Visa.

She runs it again and before the machine can even beep “declined.”

“Ah,” Jisung’s tongue feels thick in his mouth. “It’s my aunt’s card. She put my name on the account. I’ll call her to see what’s wrong.”

The clerk’s vacant stare indicates how little she truly cares.

“Can I use your phone though baby?”

* * *

 

_July 13 th 1998_

“Listen Yui,” Chan picks the discarded plastic recorder up from the floor. “I’m sure if you practice more, you’ll be able to move up to piano soon.” Then, he bends slightly at the waist and brushes his knuckle against the girl’s tearstained face.

“I practice all the time,” she huffs indignantly.

He knows. He can tell. She moves her fingers perfectly for each note. It doesn’t negate the fact that she’s absolutely tone deaf. Each huff of breath sounds like a shrill whistle…even in comparison to the sounds that most recorders make.

“Listen,” Chan’s eyes focus and unfocus for a moment on the girl’s houndstooth patterned dress. In the blurr, he finds an answer. “If you fill out your practice report next week, _and-“_ Even though his contract stipulated in curt, abrasive language he’s here to teach _English_ and _only_ English, the school practically begged him to teach music on Saturdays.

The last music teacher....died. Everyone assured him she went peacefully in her sleep at eighty-seven, but there’s no feeling quite like peeling your dead predecessor’s jade colored cardigan off of the piano bench on the first day.  

“Get ninety percent on your next quiz, you can move upward. Okay?”

“Okay,” barely a whisper.

“Alright. Now,” Chan procures the travel packet of tissues that he _constantly_ keeps in his pocket now that he works with kids. “Cheer up, it’s too nice of a day outside for the sun to see you frowning.”

The tiny girl accepts the tissue and makes a thunderous honking noise with her nose. “Bye Mr. Bang,” she says before proudly stuffing the soaked through tissue into his hand.

“Yeah bye.”

When he’s straightened up the classroom, hastily converted into music room, and locked the door, there’s only one thing left to do. Enjoy the _one_ true perk of Saturday lessons.

 _Slide-Screech._ He pulls one of the impossibly tiny chairs outward and sinks to the floor. _Whiir-Ping._ The modem dials up. _Tip-Tap_ on the keys as he enters his password. Unmitigated access to the computer lab makes it all worthwhile.

* * *

 

_July 13 th, 1998_

Changbin’s blackout curtains are pulled tight across the window, but he doesn’t need to see outside to know that it’s well past noon. He didn’t come back from the bar last night until after two, and he’s never been an early riser anyway.

Sleep barely shaken from his eyes, he gropes around blindly for the liter bottle of water he keeps by his bed. And— _Fuck._

He only realizes when it’s too late, when the thick clunky cast collides with the open bottle that he’s used the wrong hand. The plastic _pops_ against the floor and water flies everywhere.

Changbin sits up, peels off his shirt, and stomps it into the puddle of water until it’s soaked through. Like the way that slowly seeps into the fibers, he slowly begins to piece together the rest of his night.

Woojin wanted to mother him, but Changbin, arm twisted like taffy, insisted it was no big deal. Yet and still, Woojin went with him to urgent care anyway. Ibuprofen really didn’t _do_ anything for him, so in lieu of taking the pills he met up with Minho and downed shot after shot at the club.

Minho went home with someone who looked like a model, and Changbin ate fried chicken at 3:30 in the morning alone.

At least he’s got a nice ache in the front of his head to match the ache in his arm.

But enough with the sad shit. There’s bigger and better stuff on the horizon.

Changbin doesn’t even look at the shirt that he pulls from the utilitarian metal shelf he uses for his clothes instead of a dresser. Then, he stuffs feet into his Adidas sandals before trudging downstairs to the internet café that’s artfully positioned below floor after floor of student apartments.

After ordering a coffee, he spills Splenda everywhere trying to tear open the packets one handed. Fuck. Icing on the cake, some four eyed, Doom playing douche is at his favorite computer, the one just underneath the window air.

But, when the modem finishes singing the song of her people, Han, is already online. Never mind the fact that he’s filled up the group chat, _their_ chat, just the two of them, is nine messages deep.

* * *

 

_July 13 th, 1998_

Jisung wakes up to the smell of rich broth, steeped tea, and the feeling of her touch all over him. His lips are kiss bruised, a patch on his neck aches so good, and then there’s the sticky spot just below his belly button. Most mornings….Most mornings he’d just scratch that sticky spot until the dried cum caught into the fine soft hairs on his stomach. Then he’d pull on his pajama pants over top and go find Rania.

Today, for no real reason at all, he pulls his underwear from back behind the pillows, and tromps off to the shower.

He’s got stuff of his own, but when he’s in here alone, and she isn’t looking, he really, really likes to use her stuff. Rosewater bodywash, lavender shampoo, and keratin scalp treatment.

He washes his hair twice, scrubs his skin until it’s red and raw, and then waits until the water runs cold.

When the heat runs out, so does the unsettled feeling in his stomach. Hunger, and his cock half hard and twitching, win out against whatever uncertainty had taken up residence in his heart.

He puts on a checkered terry-cloth robe that’s technically his. Technically his, but only she wears around the apartment.

“You’re absolutely glowing,” he whispers into the shell of her ear. 

“You just love me for my homemade noodles.”

Embracing her from behind, Jisung takes each of her hands into his own and braces her against the counter. “Nia, I love you, how can you scorn me so.” 

Lift up the nightie and blanket it with the robe that is _technically_ his, but smells like her. When he pushes inside, it’s her soft.  Her heat. Her wet. Her. Just her.

Only when she’s napping on the black leather sofa with the television on can he tear through the smothering pink cellophane of her love. Only after he’s got miles and miles and miles of noodles pulled through the seam of his chopsticks, when he spills droplets of translucent broth across the bright pink keys of her IMac can he become himself again.

* * *

 

 _JOne:_ DID MY BOI POP HIS CHERRY ?

 _JOne:_ Spill

 _Changbin:_ Because you have no patience

 _Changbin:_ No I did not.

 _Changbin:_ The specifics, I’ll wait for Channie

 _JOne:_ That could take ages

_Last message sent: 13:53_

_CB77 14:07:_ I just had a kid blow her nose in my hands, and I’m pretty sure my eardrums are bleeding. Sorry to keep you waiting Han.

 _JOne:_ Ok

JOne: Ok

JOne: Ok

JOne: Out with it

 _Changbin_ : People are skeptical of your abilities if you’re rocking a hot pink cast

_CB77 and JOne are typing_

_Changbin: brk my wrist_

_CB77:_ I’m sorry, what?

_JOne: ???!?_

_JOne:_ Seriously?

 _Changbin:_ Yeah, I was skating yesterday and being a dumbass. I don’t want to talk about it, _or_ my perpetual, unending virginity. I’m fine. Just hurt my pride, which is nothing new. We have more important stuff to discuss

 _CB77:_ Like what :P Anything important?

 _JOne:_ I can’t think of anything.

 _Changbin:_ This is actually stressful for me. I’m going to be offline for like, four days so we need to plan this. My mom is already gonna flip out once she sees my arm. When she finds out I’m ditching our first family vacation in years…

 _JOne_ : tell her you’re going to lose your virginity.

 _CB77_ : Tell her you’re going to attend a culturally significant event.

 _CB77:_ No seriously…I think we should all meet at the central station. Not in the terminal though. There’s a record store in the basement mall. Meet there.

 _JOne:_ I want to see where you live Chan.

 _CB77:_ Absolutely not. It’s too hard to get here. No one speaks Korean, and you can only get here by ferry…This ferry being the only form of public transportation that runs late in the entire country. Maybe we should decide what we’re going to wear too. So, we can describe it to each other, so we know who to look for. I’ve never even seen a photo of you Changbin.

 _Changbin:_ I can’t pick an outfit in advance. I’ll be the handsomest person in the record store. With a pink cast.

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

 “Dad,” Changbin presses his hands together as if in prayer in front of his mouth. The hot pink cast comically _thunks_ against his hand with a dull hollow sound. “I know, that as your son I have asked a lot of you.”

Changbin’s father looks up from the crumpled tourist map he’s unfurled across one of the beds in the hotel room. Through his thick cola bottle glasses, he blinks at Changbin, once. Twice. Three times, as if he were desperately trying to remember where he was and understand why his son may speak to him in this manner.

“And you and mom have already done so much, to bring me on vacation. I’ve never even left the country before.”

Through the paper-thin bathroom door, he can hear the shower pipes groan to a halt. With the water turned off, he can hear his mother sing loudly and proudly in an off-key tune.

Fuck.

Talking faster now, “but as you also know, I am an adult now. And, also, because Haeun is going to also be leaving for school next year, I think maybe you should make sure you spend extra time with her.”

Until the mere utterance of his sister’s name, she’s lost in one of _his_ CDs and oblivious to the conversation around her. Then, she throws the headphones down around her neck and, “Changbin what the fuck?”

“So, I can’t go with you to Universal Studios today. Actually, I’m going to take the train to Osaka by myself, and it’s totally fine, and mom shouldn’t freak out. Because it’s fine, and I actually live on my own.  I’m going to a concert...with my friends…my uh, friends from school that I totally know in real life. You know how important concerts are.”

Fuck.

His carryon is stuffed with an outfit for tomorrow, his train pass, and his tape recorder. His passport feels heavy in his pocket next to his wallet. It might as well be miles, and miles to the door.  “So, I’ll see you on Sunday, in time to go to Kyoto.”

He makes it across the carpet, dodges his sister’s discarded platform sandals, but fumbles with the sliding lock.

Behind him, his father’s voice, suddenly alert and stern, “Changbin,”

“Yessir!?” His voice cracks. He’s never, _never_ heard his father sound angry at him.

“What show are you going to?”

“Uh, um,” he’s never heard music in his life, at least that’s what it feels like when his head is so damn empty. Nothing but the throbbing sound of his heart beating in his ears. “The Pillows.”

“Not into metal anymore?”  

* * *

 

Changbin stands at the counter at the station convenience store, his eyes wide, and his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. He’s acutely aware of the sensation of it drying in the stale station air, but the scent of damp fried Seven-Eleven food and deeply rooted fear keeps him from closing his mouth. 

Eyes cross, and uncross as he stares at the square package hung up on a peg next the cigarettes, just on the horizon behind the clerk’s shoulder.

 _“Anything else?”_  The clerk asks for what has to be the second or third time.

Too bad Changbin’s Japanese is shit.

“Yeah!” he responds just a little too loudly.

The clerk, who speaks in a near whisper, winces at the pitch and the volume of his voice.

Changbin wields his cast covered forearm as gracefully as a wispy ballerina would wield a barbarian’s club. He whips it upward, and points backward, and the whole thing almost knocks him off balance. “Those,” he says, and _god_ is that his voice? Warped and cracked like a record left out in the sun.

The lump in his throat tastes like shame, and the sweat that covers his palms streaks down his jeans when he wipes his hands against his thighs. “In the red package.”

“Oh!” The clerk laughs, and responds in a voice that’s loud. Retaliate against the noisy, idiotic foreigner kind of loud. “the condoms?”

His overprotective mother was absolutely, completely, 100% correct. He was going to die. Just keel over on the checkered convenience store floor. Not from the skating, or the seedy clubs, or the wandering off alone stuff that she always feared, but because of sheer, absolute embarrassment.

“Yep.” Changbin rubs his eye with the palm of his hand so hard that he can hear his eyeball squelch in protest. When lets go, he watches the container of instant Gyoza and rice balls he bought for the train come back to view in slow motion. Pixel by pixel, like a grainy photo on a shittily programmed webpage. Loudly, confidently, to counter balance his shame, “Yeah, those.”

* * *

_June 16 th, 1998_

_Changbin:_ I’ve taken to saving my chat logs as text files on diskettes after I log off. I figure if it costs me 4500 won an hour to get online, I should at least have a memento.

 _CB77:_ Sounds like a totally normal, not neurotic thing to do.

 _Changbin:_ I think it’s because when I lived at home, I had this answering machine. I’d keep the tapes, a whole box of them, and use them in samples. I have a party line now in my shitty apartment complex and no answering machine.

 _Changbin:_ I can’t actually do anything with the logs other than label them with the approximate dates. One lasts about three weeks, unless Han’s really spazzing out about something and types us a novel. I’m garbage at remembering stuff, and I thought it would be less pathetic than a journal. The people that keep them always come across as schmucks.

 _CB77:_ I keep a journal.

 _Changbin:_ I rest my case.

 _Changbin:_ Anyway, I’m not immune...to the pathetic.

 _Changbin:_ “Somehow, I managed to make it through my first year of college without losing my virginity.”

 _Changbin:_ I sent you that message a little over a year ago. Cross out first year now, and replace it with second year. Came across that little gem looking for that convo we had about wave cards.

 _CB77:_ Listen man, if you want.

 _CB77_ If you just want it gone…When you come for the concert, and if there aren’t better options. We could.

 _Changbin:_ ….

It’s early evening and it’s raining outside. Instead of buying a burned ass coffee, he bought a flat ass bottle of beer. It’s disgusting, but here’s the thing. The first left him feeling thirsty, and so there wasn’t really any other option than to buy another one. So now, two beers in, it doesn’t seem like an awful idea.

 _CB77:_ Forget I said anything, it was a stupid idea.

 _Changbin:_ Are you offering to take my virginity?

Changbin drowns the rest of the beer. For good measure, he gets up, leaves his machine running, and walks to the convenience store next door. Only when he returns to his cubicle, pops the tab, and laps the foam at the top does he jab at the keyboard and interrupt the flying toaster screen saver.

 _CB77:_ Yeah.

  _CB77:_ So…

 _CB77:_ Changbin for once, please don’t be a dick.

 _Changbin:_ What if I’m ugly?

 _CB77:_ Are you?

 _Changbin:_ No, I’m better looking than you and Han.

 _CB77:_ Then I stand by what I said.

 _Changbin:_ Fine, if you can’t find a rebound fuck on your own. I'd be okay with that. 

* * *

 

_July 17 th, 1998_

She lets _him_ drive the Cabriolet to the airport. Cherry red with leather seats, Jisung dropped the top no sooner than she handed him the keys.

“Hannie my hair!” But he knows that she’s got a silk Hermes tucked in her bag, and she’s just been waiting for just the right moment to use it. 

When his hand isn’t resting on the gearshift, it’s resting on her thigh, bare beneath the short black skirt she wears. It’s nice, real nice, when he drives, cause he can actually drive a manual. Whenever she drives, she kills the engine without fail and gives him whiplash.

“You gonna miss me Hannie?” She yells up over the sound of the engine.

“I’m only gone for the weekend Rania.” 

“That’s right. Cause you’d never miss my birthday right?” Creamy skin shifts beneath his hand, and envelops his palm in warmth.

Rounding a sharp curve, the road expands into a third lane, and it’s just the right time for Jisung to overtake the sub compact that’s been shifting back and forth between lanes for the last three exits. So, he unsticks his melted palm from her burning thigh and shifts up.

“Your twenty eighth? Never. That’s a very important year, so I’m told.”

“Umm….” Her laughter is light and airy, like the scarf around her hair that whips in the wind. “I think I’ll turn twenty-nine this year.”

Her voice sounds the same way that it does when she walks up to the jewelry counter. Certain, so very, very certain. Jisung wonders if he’ll _ever_ be able to sound half as certain about _anything_ , let alone something that truly matters. “I mean, after all, I turned twenty-six three times, twenty-seven three times, and twenty-eight four times.”

The hot summer air blows into one ear, and out the other. In the space in-between most people would have a brain. All Jisung feels is a hollow space behind his eye sockets. The shell of his ear aches with the roar of the wind, and the emptiness between the two of them.

“Twenty-eight was a good age.”

“Rania, if you’re not careful, you’ll turn thirty someday.”

“I’d never.”

* * *

 

_March 21 st, 1998_

_JOne:_ Changbin, I think I’m gay.

 _JOne:_ Not like, regular gay like you and Chan. But extra gay.

 _Changbin:_ That would certainly explain all the overcompensation

 _JOne:_ Over-what?

 _Changbin: JOne 22:47 PM:_ “Swear to god she just sucked my soul out of my dick Changbin. She got this brand new lipstick, that frosty blue stuff that’s really in right now. God it was amazing.”

 _Changbin:_ Han, you sent me that message seventeen minutes ago when I made the mistake of asking how your night was going.

 _Changbin:_ it strikes me as a _very_ straight and very secure thing to say.

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

Chan wakes at six A.M. as always, combs his hair, flosses his teeth, and sleepily eats a few fistfuls of dry puffed rice in lieu of a real breakfast.

Walking on the balls of his feet, he deliberately jumps over the threshold to avoid the squeaky floorboard and down into the stoop where the shoes are stored.

The questioning scowl of his landlady, Mrs. Yamada jumps out from the shadows _before_ the acrid smell of her long one hundred and twenty millimeter cigarette or the accompanying rattle of her cough, and it makes Chan jump in surprise.

“It’s summer vacation. You should rest kid.”

“It’s six thirty in the morning, and you’re retired. So should you, Mrs. Yamada.”

“If I’m not harassing my tenants I’m as good as dead,” the old woman interrupts herself with another long cough.

Caught in the liminal space between inside and outside, slippers shucked in the doorway, but sneakers tucked into the cubby a half step away, he’s paralyzed and helpless.

“You’re going to the city?”

“Early bird gets the worm? Right?”

“I need you to get me a cheesecake. Uncle Rikuro, not that shitty cheap place that’s popped up a few blocks over.”

“Rikuro,” he’d murder someone in cold blood for Mrs. Yamada, but she wouldn’t appreciate it if he agreed without an argument. “The line is always so long, it will take all day.”

“I’ll give you ten percent off your rent.”

“Ah, shouldn’t you be paying me to live here? You had me up on the roof last month to patch a leak. The hot water only lasts for seven minutes, I timed it, _and_ there’s the issue of roaches in the wood shed—”

“What is it that you teach Mr. Bang. Extortion?” Somewhere, in the midst of the argument, her clutch appears magically from the pocket of her housecoat, or the oversized sleeves. Cigarettes, hard candies, small bills, all prizes hard earned come from the cigarette burned red satin lining of this very bag. “Exploitation of the elderly?”

When Chan picks his upturned powder blue Schwinn up from the lawn, kicks up the stand, and starts peddling down the road, the sun has just barely begun to crest over the horizon. Bathed in the crepuscular glow, he rides into the place where complacency of night meets the potential of day. Goosebumps rise to the flesh of his arm and multiply with each and every steady _click click click_ of his bicycle chain.

The sun interrupts the horizon ever so slightly. It’s already stifling hot, but the wind as he rides gives him goosebumps.

 He’s got a five thousand yen folded into his wallet. He’s going to see his favorite band. He’s going to see his favorite people…that he’s never seen before. 

* * *

 

_July 15 th, 1998_

_Jone:_ What are you doing online so late?

From what it sounds like, Chan’s house is out in the sticks. He’s usually only online in the early evening, after his classes are let out, and he hasn’t taken the bus home yet.

 _CB77:_ I went out for dinner with some of the other teachers and missed my bus X (

 _JOne:_ What are you gonna do? Sleep in the school?

CB77: …

 _JOne:_ The hell.

 _CB77:_ Yeah, that’s where teachers live, at school.

 _CB77:_ You sound like my students

 _CB77_ : I’m crashing at my coworker’s house. 

 _JOne_ : is it weird that I miss Changbin? It hasn’t even been a full day.

 _CB77_ : He’s literally…on his way to meet us.

 _JOne:_ I still miss him. Just like I’d miss you if you weren’t on for a few days. But…Don’t tell him I said that.

 _CB77:_ I’d never.

There’s a long silence between them, and it makes Han decide that now’s just as good of a time as any to ask.

 _JOne:_ You doin okay though?

 _CB77:_ I guess. He sent me a box of stuff back. My t-shirt, a bunch of photos, stuff that means nothing other than vague references to inside jokes. I should throw it out but it’s been sitting on my desk since Tuesday.

 _JOne:_ Breakups suck

 _CB77:_ I don’t even think I’m technically allowed to feel this sad.

 _CB77:_ I cheated.


	2. Spiky Seeds

_July 18 th, 1998_

It takes a lot to make Chan angry. It’s why he can handle a room full of screaming first graders, and its why he’s the only teacher on staff that can make it through one of the principle’s infamous, three-hour-long staff meetings without fuming, and why he can talk to his father about politics dead sober when none of his siblings can. When Chan thinks about how far the city is in distance, versus how far the city is in travel time, the proportion is just big enough and obstinate enough to make irritation pull down the back of his shirt and sunburn the nape of his neck in the morning sun.

Out here, the minutes drip like honey, slow and viscous.

Normally, he doesn’t mind so much. It’s a nice change of pace from the other places he’s called home.

Now, now he feels suffocated by the sands of unmoving time and the knowledge that somewhere, not so very far from here, but very, very far from here, Changbin’s waiting for him, and Han’s on his way.

He can’t stop thinking about what Han said last night.  He’s not mad about it….well, maybe he’s mad at how true it was.

Chan looks at the powder blue Schwinn. The old, bike rests in its natural state. Upturned in the too tall countryside grass, front wheel lazily catching in the breeze spinning and spinning languidly.

Everything could change at a moment’s notice.

Suddenly, the memory of a businessman, here from the city, visiting his parents floods his memory. The visitor called his bike antique and wanted to buy it off of him, and even though the stranger has long gone back to the place that he calls home, it irritates Chan retrospectively.

It’s his bike, and he wants to come back to it. So, he rights the bike and props it up next to the nearby bus stop sign.

 In an instant, this bike that he bought at a yard sale for three hundred yen and unopened can of Diet Coke he had in his bag from the convenience store matters so much. So, he should tether it accordingly.

Looking into his bag, he’s got a few cassette tapes, a clean shirt and underwear, an extra bottle of water, and a rice ball made by Mrs. Yamada. Too bad he doesn’t actually own a bike lock.

No one would steal the bike anyway. Not even a visitor that left home some twenty or so years ago. Chan’s left his bike unattended at the lone bar over the weekend when he’s gotten too drunk. Doesn’t have a key to his own house, but it doesn’t matter so much because the door’s always unlocked.  The worst thing that’s happened in the town’s recent memory is someone stole Mrs. Saito’s pet teacup pig...Except, after a thorough investigation by the police force, it was determined that the pig simply pushed open the screen door and wandered over to the dumpster behind the takoyaki shack on Main Street.

That’s just how things are on this microscopic island.

But the urge is sudden and all consuming.

Chan looks to his beaten up converse. Suddenly, a frayed shoestring is better than nothing. He unties his shoe and unthreads the string rivet by rivet until it’s free. Hastily, urgently, he knots and double knots the string around the middle part of the bike and the bus stop signpost.

Only after, and not a minute before the bike is firmly secured, and his shoe hangs pitifully off of his left foot, he can see the vapor of a black smog cloud belched just off the horizon. Then, in the distance he spies a red and white stripe signifying that the ferry has finally decided to show.

Only after, and not a second before Chan sees the boat, does he jam his insecurities back into his backpack, somewhere between his toothbrush and his clean underwear.

There’s a long line of cars lined up on the street ready to drive onto the loading dock of the ferry. As a foot passenger, Chan’s able to walk right on and find a seat at the front with minimal effort. Seaspray tickles his nose, and the sun shines down so bright that the sparkling blue water turns into a blinding white reflective light.

He’s got a half dozen tapes in his bag, among them, one cassette marked with masking tape and carved with ballpoint pen, “J.One,” and the tape marked with a dynamo stamped label, “SpearB.”

He can’t choose between the two.

 So he sits in silence for forty five minutes letting the roaring engine and the ocean spray buzz so hard  that he’d swear that the wrinkles on his brain were rubbed smooth.

In that moment, he doesn’t have to hold a single coherent thought in his brain.

He likes it.

* * *

 

_June 16 th, 1998 _

_JOne:_ Rania’s got a boyfriend. Or she’s married. I don’t know. She’s got a giant rock on her finger, and she goes to see him every other weekend.

 _Cb77_ : That doesn’t bother you?

 _JOne:_ Only when they talk on the phone. That always pisses me off.

 _CB77:_ Seven hundred and forty one people, that includes the guy that was 103 that died in his sleep last week, most of them are ancient, and I still managed to find someone.

 _JOne:_ Maybe it’s not that hard if you’re looking.

The details of Han’s life spill out in tiny, unexpected waves. Coffee over the brim of a tightly snapped on lid, or foam out of a bottle that to your knowledge, hadn’t been shaken. He’s Korean. This much was made clear when, mindlessly scrolling through his favorite bulletin board Chan saw one post in brazen, almost belligerent hangul, _“ANY KOREAN SPEAKERS ON RIGHT NOW? I GOT A NEW MPC60 SAMPLER FOR MY BIRTHDAY BUT I SPILLED SODA ON THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL.”_ And in roman letters, immediately accompanying the mini tirade, “MY ENGLISH IS BAD. SORRY.”

Chan typed a simple response, “I speak Korean and I own an MPC60” and “try han.rec.music too,” and “you can find me there a lot.” Just like that their fate was sealed.

From there, he learned that he didn’t just own an MPC60, but a Roland WX30 and a Kurzweil 260, and every, every single one has been all or partially submerged in orange soda.

He lives in Malaysia, but he wasn’t born there.

 He learns very quickly, and Han won’t let him forget that he lives with a woman named Rania.

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

Jisung vaguely remembers bumping the “show us ur face” board just after Christmas. Rania got a new digital camera. So, after taking all sorts of important pictures: the busted neon light sign that says “ass,” that can be seen from their balcony, pictures of her ass, and pictures of the neighbor’s cat through the screen door, he asked Rania to take a picture of him.

When the memory was full, he unwound the cord, black plastic coated wire, and plugged the camera into the computer. Then, he waited for the progress bar to crawl across the screen.

Chan linked to his school’s website, which seemed like a very brazen thing do. Dressed in a poorly fitting navy suit, Chan looked like a child stuffed into an outfit that his parents hoped he’d grow into. His expression, trapped forever in an unfortunate school photo.

Changbin never added a photo, just replied to his own post, “You couldn’t be fucked to put a shirt on or take the hoagie out of bed with you?”

And Jisung responded, “yeah, chicken parm.”

Jisung’s never seen a photo of Changbin before, but he just kind of knows.

A man with an arm full of studded bracelets stands with a wide proud stance at the classic contemporary section. With the sample headphones wrapped around his ears, he fidgets with the thick metal buttons to key in his selection.

Neon pink cast raised high above his head, he conducts an imaginary orchestra.

“Hey Changbin!” like they’re the oldest of friends.

* * *

_November 9 th, _1997

Chan listened to the album so many times when it first came out that he fucked up the first copy of his tape in 47 days. He knows this for an absolute fact, because he dug the receipt out of the bottom of his backpack to see if he could try to return it for another, even though he knows that the clock radio in the kitchen eats good tapes for breakfast, but turns up its nose at cassettes of traditional music, or worse still . But, the crumpled receipt told him in faded ink letters, “forty-five days with receipt, no exceptions.”

So he buys another tape, and spends the better part of a Sunday afternoon copying the fresh tape onto blanks, just in case. Then, because there’s nothing better to do, he finds image of the cover online, and does an absolutely horrible job of resizing it. Then, he loads a fresh ream of paper into the single inkjet printer in the faculty office. A few copies get sacrificed to the strange and fickle printer gods. A few copies make it out alive.

Cut the edges with a pair of safety scissors before he carefully, carefully tucks the paper into the clear plastic window at the front.

When this task is finished, he moves onto the full jewel case of empty floppy diskettes in his bag, and the full, hastily labelled diskettes he retrieved from the mouth of his synthesizer, the drawers of his desk, and the office desktop.

Dutifully, he shoves his discarded pull over into the crack underneath the door to the faculty office. No one comes in on weekends except for him, but this isn’t the time to start taking chances. Then, he  listens to them all through the tinny PC speakers, and selects the very best ones to copy over.

On the other side of his desk, there’s a lukewarm cup of tea and an angry blinking messenger box.

Whether it’s the dual deck tape player, or the computer, the process is more or less the same. _Click-Thunk,_ pause-play-record, square, triangle, circle. Copy eject.

The whole set up pales in comparison to what he has in Seoul, but it makes him feel good. Nothing on this Earth, from the mountain of exams on his desk that he should be grading, to the lesson he needs to plan for tomorrow, seems more important.

When his fingers feel sore from jamming the buttons, and he’s got a mosaic of diskettes in front of him, he raids the crayons and colored pencils, and labels the diskettes accordingly.

 _CB77:_ Hey. Give your address to me. A scary stranger from the internet. I don’t have a microphone over hear and my mom won’t send me one from home because she says it costs too much. I need to send you some beats so you can send me some vocals.

 _CB77:_ Oh yeah, and you’ve _got_ to listen to this album.  

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998 _

“Don’t touch me. God only knows where your hands have been.”

The squeak of rubber soles dragged against linoleum tile, and Chan’s first thought is, “that’s them.”

His second thought, is that it was naïve to think that he was done with first graders for the weekend.

In the distance, a sharp, accidental laugh rings out over the smooth rolling synth sound. Quickly repressed, it’s replaced by the sound of, “you’d really treat an injured person this way?”

“Binnie, come back we’ve only just met.”

“Ah,” Chan sighs to himself. Maybe, just maybe this was a mistake.

But he doesn’t turn back. A store clerk, exasperated and repressed, blows past him and _away_ from his friends. No the best option, the only option really, is to charge forward.

So, he rounds the discount bin and puts on his very best _you’re going to time out_ voice, “excuse me, I’m going to have to ask you men to leave.”

Han looks like he’s trying to get Changbin down into a headlock, but since Changbin is broader and stronger, Han stands precariously and half wrapped around Changbin. Changbin stands proud, like his very stability is an accomplishment.

In an instant, two sets of mischievous eyes whip around to greet him.

In that moment, it’s only confirmed. Chan indeed, has made a mistake.

Pristine white sneakers squeal against the black and white checkered linoleum in protest. A bony shoulder collides with his stomach.

Chan braces himself against the compact body shoved against his own. Caught off guard, his feet are lifted off the floor.

 Changbin, dry and nonchalant, like he hasn’t picked up Chan like he’s nothing at all. “Now this guy, maybe. I traveled a long way to meet him after all.”

Han, without so much as a hello, “now you’re just being mean.”

There’s the sharp crack of a hand slapping his ass before a third body collides with the tangled mass that is Changbin and Chan. Together, the three of them totter left, and then right, before careening into a cardboard display case of guitar tab booklets with a _crash_.

For a moment, all he can do is lie there, half dozen or so booklets crushed underneath him, and stare up at the exposed ductwork in the ceiling and the humming fluorescent lights. Changbin’s cast covered arm weighs heavy upon his chest. Han’s leg is thrown up over his own, pinning him to the ground.

Assuming that none of them understand Japanese, there’s the very distinct sound of a record store employee cursing _about them_ , but not _at_ them.

Suddenly meek sounding now, “hi Chan.”

And “nice to meet you Chan.”

* * *

 

Somehow…Somehow Han is worse in real life than he is online. There’s no capslock button, just the volume cranked up to maximum Han.

As far as Changbin’s concerned, there’s two kinds of loud in this world. There’s the kind of loud that wants to prove something: expensive cars and popped tags and a penchant for liking the sound of one’s own voice. Then...then there’s the kind of loud that’s more sincere. It comes from the chest not the nose, and even though the sound makes your ears ring, you can’t cover them up because you don’t want to miss a thing.

Han is both.  

“Nobody’s signed your cast yet,” Han notes.

“I’m not a kid” Changbin tears open a yellow Splenda packet with his teeth, and immediately the taste of saccharine grit is on his tongue. He dumps it into his coffee, grabs the stirrer from Han’s still open cup, and stirs. “And I have a reputation.”

“Mean man on the streets huh? Pink cast reputation.”

There’s no sense in pretending to be awkward around each other, or feign boundaries anymore. They tore those down like they were an errant store display.

“They do if they want to, and you let them,” but Han’s already pulled a sharpie marker from his pocket. Already taken Changbin’s cast covered palm into his own so that the tips of Changbin’s fingers rest on the smooth skin of his wrist. “Can I?”

“No dicks.”

He should be able to feel the tickle of the felt tipped pen and the pressure of Han’s fingers on the secret skin of his forearm, but he can’t. All he can hear is the occasional scrape of the marker going the wrong way against the seams in the cast.

He feels cheated.

“Whatcha doin,” Chan slides into the booth next to Changbin.

“Drawin’ dicks.”

“Oh,” immediately Chan goes for his bag. Somewhere in the shuffle, he extracts a mini sampler, three cassette cases, a small sewing kit, a tooth brush, and some tissue packets before identifying what he needs. Only when it’s all stuffed back inside the bag is Changbin allowed to see what he wanted from his bag. “Me next.”

“Don’t laugh. I call bingo two nights a week in exchange for free beer.” A rainbow of bingo blotters in orange, red, blue and green are laid out in front of him on the table.

“I bet he has a really interesting perspective though,” Han responds. For a moment, the tip of his tongue rests on the crest of his lips. Brows furrowed in concentration, he scratches the marker across the textured cast fabric. “In Australia. Uncircumcised.”

Changbin makes the ugliest snorting noise. Han always brings out the very worst in him. Always has.

* * *

 

_September 23 rd , 1997_

  _Subj:_ IT HAPPENED AGAIN. SURGE THIS TIME, NOT ORANGE SODA

 _JOne:_ I spilled surge on my Crumar and the internal memory isn’t working. Not like last time. Can’t soak the whole keyboard in rice. What should I do?

RE: IT HAPPENED AGAIN. SURGE THIS TIME NOT--

 _SpearB:_ Stop being an idiot. Depress your capslock.

* * *

 

“So,” Chan plucks the stirrer from Changbin’s coffee cup and sinks it into his own iced coffee alongside a packet of raw sugar…Which isn’t going to dissolve in the cold drink. Does he know that? He must know that. It’s just going to pool in the bottom and become thick, grainy, and useless. “Get kicked out of any good record stores lately?”

As far as Changbin’s concerned, there’s too kinds of quiet. There’s the shy and diminutive kind that’s easily forgotten. Then, there’s the subtle, forced attention, don’t blink because you’ll miss something good, kind. And although Chan definitely looks like the former in photos he’s seen online, he’s  absolutely, without a doubt, the latter in real life.

“It doesn’t feel real right?” Han says.

“Feels pretty real to me. Pick one. I’m watching my first graders, or I’m watching my grannies,” Chan chides.

“What’s that under your fingernails? It looks purple,” Changbin changes the subject.

“Oh, I got Fundip at the airport.”

“You ate it? With your hands?” Is there a word for experiencing disgust and fascination at the exact same time? Because he’s feeling it. Strongly. “Yeah no. It feels real.”

Sticky fingers slide up his cast covered arm as Han shifts his grip. Han’s thumb presses into the underside of his arm.

Changbin’s mouth curls into a smile. “Maybe too real.” 

Han doesn’t respond and only keeps drawing. His near constant half smile morphs into something fuller, and more dangerous.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“Noth-ing—”

But if he turns his head just right, Changbin can see written in shaky, childlike scrawl, “Binnie loves Hanie.”

“Draw a heart around it you coward.”

Han complies.

“Forgot one,” Chan grabs his arm and Han’s sharpie, and writes his name in the corner of the heart so that it spills out of the outline.

Then, carefully, Chan rotates his wrist so that his palm is facing upward. His curled fingers rest against the crook of his elbow, like it’s something secret, and something private. Chan fills in Han’s graffiti outlines in a bingo blotter palette. Chan alternates between soft taps, and deep depressions that cause the color to bleed outward. When it’s too much, Chan smooths it over tenderly with the tip of his finger.

When his cast is decked out in rainbow colored art, it’s Changbin’s turn. He picks up the red blotter and, “Okay, it’s your turn now. I’ll give you tattoos.”

“I don’t want that on me,” is the first reaction.

“When I was a kid I saw people in movies with tattoos. Yakuza, American gangsters, I always wanted one,” is the best justification that Changbin can offer. And, “It will wash off.”

Chan surrenders first, by rolling up his sleeve.

“This happens to you a lot.”

“Yes. Are you going to try to put my hair in pigtails too?”

“Maybe.” Changbin draws a big sloppy heart with a smudged arrow through it. The blotters are blunt and unrefined, and everything looks so smudged. So, he settles on writing “Changbin,” down one arm, and “rules” on the other arm in teal colored blotter.

“I cannot believe I’m letting you do this.”

“Han, you next.”

Han flinches when the cold ink touches his skin. Changbin’s attempt at drawing a dolphin is lackluster at best.

“What is that supposed to be?”

“Um…abstract. Impressionist. Visionary.”

As they sit in the coffee shop, they fill in the outlines they made of themselves with poorly executed jokes and expertly crafted word play.

“So why Japanese,” Han asks of Chan. “I think, at this point, if I learned another language, I’d want to know French. No one questions you if you pronounce French words correctly. They think you’re smart, they think you’re cultured, they think you can cook real food. It was cause of anime right?”

Soft red creeps to the shell of Chan’s ears, and then onward to his cheeks when Han presses him.

“No-o,” in an exaggerated tone that implies guilt moreso than a smoking gun.

“Oh my god, he totally did it because of anime,” Changbin laughs.

“Listen, listen, listen, growing up in my neighborhood there was this store. This one store. The owners were from Vietnam, but they sold stuff from all over Asia. Stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else in the suburbs unless you went to the city. So, we went there all the time, and you know they had tapes.”

“I hope it was girlie anime,” Han muses.  

“The tentacle kind?”

“I was thinking the magical girl kind,” Han responds. “But now I hope it was the tentacle kind.”

“Oh my god. It wasn’t one thing. My mom would rent me undubbed, unsubbed anime because that’s literally all they had.”

“What I’ve heard is true, it’s really primitive in the outback.”

“What was the thing you’d say you rented the most though.” This could be it. Could be the to decoding… _everything._ His horrific pickup lines, his admission that he likes to drink orange juice and Coke together, and all the little quirks that made him Chan.

“Fist of the North Star.”

“That’s so boring and typical.” Changbin pounds his good fist against the table.

“Sorry?” Until I moved here, I used to tape music shows for him and send them over each week. It’s basically how I paid for my groceries in school.”

“Then give me his contact information.”

“Surely he needs new episodes of Kopitiam, our most popular serial” Han supplies.

 “I wasn’t allowed to watch Fist of the North Star,” Changbin mentions. “Too violent.”

“For me,” Han’s eyes are wide and bright, like he’s about to say the craziest thing. “Anything with boats. Jaws. Mutiny on the Bounty, Johna and the Whale. My mom wouldn’t let me. I was terrified that I was going to die on the Titanic.”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense,” Chan laughs. “But I have a student who is afraid of Anpanman, which is unfortunate because he’s really everywhere in the first grade ecosystem. Backpacks, pencils, notebooks.”

“Poor kid.”

Just like when they’re online, they talk about everything, and they talk about nothing at all. Over screeching modems and cheap burned coffee, each message holds the potential to hold something plain-brilliant. Like gold painted over with eggshell covered enamel. Each glimmer of information is hard earned. Like the time it came up in conversation that Chan didn’t like raisins, and the fact that he and Han agreed was the best thing in the world. An amazing little mundane secret that somehow brought them closer together, they spill out now rapid-fire.

It’s nice.

* * *

 

_July, 18 th 1998 _

Chan’s always been a few steps ahead. In school, he’d turn his homework in early, or when he couldn’t he’d have a rough draft crammed somewhere in his binder. When he travels, he has a formula for how many pairs of underwear to bring. One pair per day, plus an additional two pairs in case of emergencies. He’s never lost a game of checkers in his life…Chess on the other hand, well he tries.

So, while they’re in the city, he’s got a pretty good idea of where to go and what to do to make sure his friends have a good time. That part is pretty easy.

He’s got a pretty good idea of what the three of them will be doing together, but he and Changbin didn’t exactly plan for the rest.

A room is easy enough to find in the city, but there’s the question of what to do with Han. Sorry, we can’t split a room because we have different goals that just so happen to have the same means, but tomorrow we can still hang. I know a great spot for breakfast….It’s just not in his nature, and he’s pretty certain it’s not in Changbin’s either.

So this one, minute little detail, burrows into his mind and doesn’t let go.

Between two vending machines outside of a department store, Changbin lets him know that he too has the same thing on his mind.

Don Quijote is a spiritual experience, and the one on the river, even moreso. Five stories filled to the absolute brim with every kind of trash and treasure one could imagine. Gag gifts and collectible toys, new appliances and discounted leather belts. If the promise of everything you didn’t know you needed wasn’t enough, an enormous Ferris wheel wrapped around the building façade. Going up, the small swath of river in front of the store was stretched outward like taffy until you were up high and could see all of it. At the very crest of the top, you could see the river the city skyline. Even though he’s been a half dozen times, his excitement is not unlike the morbid, apprehensive curiosity that Han and Changbin have when they’re lured through the doors.

Combing through a large department store and doubling back a few times was nothing short of exhausting. So, he leaves Changbin and Han in the checkout line in favor of the vending machines perched outside. For a moment, he looks back and forth between the two machines, the main difference among them, juice or soda, juice or soda.

Deciding on juice, he inserts a lone one hundred yen coin. His fingers brush against the plastic panel button—but

A loud, _click-thunk_ indicates that someone else has beaten him. 

From the corner of his eye, Changbin bends at the waist and pushes back the fingerprint stained metal flap to retrieve his prize.

“It’s so hot out here,” Changbin notes, wiping his brow. Then, carefully holding the can against his cast and his chest, he pops the top with a satisfying _crack_. Then, he sips off the overspill. 

“Ah, Changbin!” Too much sugar, that won’t quench their thirst. “Seriously, mango? I wanted peach water.”

“I think we’ve lost him forever,” Changbin’s tone is flat and borderlines on disinterested.  “He went back for some socks with gummy bears screen-printed on. And some floppy socks, for his girlfriend I guess, I think they’d look better than him.”

Changbin takes a long draught from the can. Condensation drops form near the lip, swells in the heat, and drag downward. Changbin’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he drinks, and the whole thing ends with a satisfied sigh from Changbin.

“Probably. What’d you get?”

Changbin takes another long sip. Chan should probably just get another drink at this point.

“One of those little towels, since people don’t believe in paper towels here I guess. Some candy, and I’m working on a nice blister, so band aids.”

Changbin offers the can to him, tab turned slightly to the side, orange pink liquid droplets gathered on the lip.  Chan unfocuses his eyes for a moment as his vision becomes blurry for a moment, purposefully unfocusing and refocusing his eyes. Finally, he accepts the drink from Changbin.

“This is too sweet for me,” but he takes a sip anyway. “I never would’ve thought you’d have a sweet tooth.” 

“It’s too sweet, so you can’t drink it, or its weird cause it’s like we kissed, but we haven’t yet, so you can’t drink it?”

“Subtle.”  Chan tears his glance away from the pink can between his fingers and towards Changbin, who stands facing the river and is haloed by the reflective glare of the river and the high afternoon sun.

Chan’s always been a few steps ahead, but he’s not exactly certain if that’s the case right now. Without a chance to plan, he simply acts, taking twin fistfuls of Changbin’s shirt into his hands and pulling him into the space between the soda and juice vending machines. When their mouths collide, it’s less of a kiss than it is bold faced, chest beating, back of the bar at closing time kind of dare. Chan’s mouth lands lopsided on Changbin’s. Readjust, and their noses bump together. Readjust again and they finally get it right. Chan accepts Changbin’s dare and ups the ante.

It’s not at all private, and only a matter of time before Han’s voracious desire for trinkets was satisfied and he came out of the store looking for them.

Maybe that was the easier option, than explaining it to him directly. 

Half step back, a tilt of his head, Chan lets him breathe, but not for long. The next kiss is sloppy, fervent, but anything but inexperienced. Each probe of Changbin’s tongue is an act of interrogation, and Chan can only hope that each return swipe, each half sigh into Changbin’s mouth, is a response good enough for Changbin.

Break with a smack, and rejoin for a third time. No clinked teeth or bumping noses, just raw want, and the feeling of Changbin tugging his lower lip between his teeth until it feels fat and red.

Chan won’t win by simply daring him again and again and again. For Changbin, this kind of challenge isn’t zero sum.

“At least it’s clear now that we both wanna—”

“Yeah,” Changbin responds, throaty and breathless.

* * *

 

Changbin is somewhat of a perfectionist, and he’d like to chalk up his current level of frustration to that alone. He almost failed his first-year composition class because out of a dozen or more drafts, nothing seemed good enough. He had an arrogant, self-destructive conviction that turning in something forced was _worse_ somehow than turning in nothing at all.

His only saving grace was Woojin waiting until he was in the bathroom, printing out one of his many drafts, and ran down the hallway and shoved it under the door of the professor’s office.

On the opposite end…When he first started hanging out with Woojin, one of the very first places they went was a Chinese restaurant near campus. They had the best Dim Sum in the city for ten thousand won a plate, or all you could eat for twenty. They’d skip breakfast and go together after their afternoon classes, too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Feeling faint, Changbin couldn’t taste the food until well into his second plate.

He could easily clear two or three plates on a normal day. When he and Woojin engaged in ritualistic fasting, all bets were off on how many dumplings he could actually stuff into his mouth.

Glutton-perfectionist was just a bit of an oxymoron. Yet, in this moment, Changbin stares twin beasts of gluttony and perfectionism in the eye and demands that they work for him and in his favor.

Why lose his virginity to one impossibly hot guy when he could go for two?

* * *

 

Realization sneaks up behind him, taps him on the shoulder, waits for him to turn around, and shoots him point blank in the dick. Kinda like how he’s getting his ass handed to him in Time Crisis. “Chan, Chan, Chan, look out.” Unable to wait, Jisung extends the gun as far as it will go so that the tether is pulled tight. As he shoots at the screen, the toy gun rattles with a _pop-pop-pop_ cap gun sound. Jisung shoots at Chan’s screen, ignoring his own impending danger.

“Thanks for saving me, but you know, it’s actually easier if you start shooting left to right on this level. Even though they pop up later, they’re closer. And,” Chan adds as an afterthought. “If you stopped trying to save me when I’m actually fine, you’d do better.  

“Well, I worry.” If…if Changbin wants to lose his virginity.

“I like to play strategically, not just shoot everywhere.”

“Health!” And he’s into guys. Like, super into guys. Like, super extra into guys, but has never _really_ had the chance to be with a guy…

“Oh no.”

“Ah, you’re not so good at this are you Han?” Changbin joins them at the machine, presumably only after the UFO catcher he’d been parked at took all of his money with nothing better to show for it.

“I’m the melee, he’s the sniper.” he responds through gritted teeth. Red flashes on screen signifying his impending death. It’s too hard to strategize in game while he’s standing here trying to strategize in real life.

Like he and Changbin could. If Changbin wanted. They could.

“Ah, no, Han, you’ve gone and left me.” Chan mumbles when red overtakes the screen.

Jisung holsters the blue gun back onto the machine. “Changbin, play Jurrasic Park with me?”

“Sure.”

Jisung learned this trick when he was still living in Seoul. He’d like to thank this particular arcade for still having one even though the cabinet is years old now. The game has a big screen with two light guns, but it isn’t just any old stand up cabinet.

No. There’s a cozy bench seat, so it’s like you’re driving one of the cars in the movie. To block out light from other games, there’s a curtain on either side of the bench.

Jisung doesn’t expect a miracle to happen. This isn’t like his classmate’s 14th birthday party where his parents rented out an arcade. He met this girl Eun Park. They played around together, and he managed to get his hand up her skirt and a kiss with tongue inside a Jurrasic Park game.

But if a miracle _did_ happen, he’d be like, totally fine with it.

Changbin spills 200 yen into into the Player 1 coin slot.

Jisung does the same with Player 2.

With a certain level of familiarity, Changbin selects an intermediate level without asking. “Oh wait, is that ok?”

So, they shoot down line after line of raptors. Then, onward and forward to the boss, a t-rex. It doesn’t really make sense given the movie’s premise, but Han doesn’t try to question it too much.

“Yeah, I’m kind of good at this game.”

“That’s cool.” And where Jisung expects a quip, or a joke, there isn’t one. Just a question. “You have the new Street Fighter?”

“Not yet—Ah!” Lost in conversation, he takes a hit.

“I do. But everyone on my floor is a loser and my best friend is horrible at video games. So I don’t have anyone to play with.”

It’s like an invitation. A thousand mile, passport requiring, invitation.

“Fuck,” advancing past the boss level, a heavy rain of small carnivorous dinosaurs rain down upon them and eat up the rest of their health bar.

For a moment, Jisung doesn’t look at Changbin. Instead, he keeps his eyes trained on the screen that flashes a count down. 10. 9. 8. 7. Continue?

Continue?

Continue?

Move forward, or reset?

Jisung wets his lips with his tongue, but everything feels dry. He should’ve bought a soda. He should’ve brought some breath mints. He brushed his teeth in the men’s room at Kansai International, but that feels like absolute lifetimes ago.

When his eyes meet Changbin’s there’s no definitive answer hidden there, only more confusion. His gaze is deep, wide eyed, and surprisingly unguarded in way that Jisung’s never seen him be…in all of two hours of knowing him beyond a blinking cursor and glowing screen.

Jisung moves slowly. Hand on his thigh, hand cupping his face. The feather light kiss is quickly drowned in honey and the only thing that’s left is something viscous and sticky. Press of lips, press of tongue, Changbin tastes sweet like mango juice.


	3. Hybrid Rainbow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twitter: @missbluniverse

_February 14 th, 1998_

_Changbin:_ I regret to inform you that as one of my two trusted, more experienced gay friends, that I have come to you with a problem…Maybe not so much a problem…I need some opinions that aren’t mine. When I have several opinions that aren’t mine, I need to squish them together into one edgeless opinion that barely resembles my current opinion, because I’m pretty sure it’s bad.

_CB77:_ Okay. Let me be your queer Gandalf. Let me lead you through gay Middle Earth.

_Changbin:_ I’m stealing that and using it like I thought of it myself.

_Changbin:_ I have this friend. I think he’s into dudes. I don’t want to bring it up because he like…talks about eating pussy constantly and I don’t want to be the person who sets off that _entire_ existential crisis. But also, there’s something going on there, and I know what it’s like to go through all of that alone. Especially when you’re still in high school.  

_CB77:_ Before I give you advice so sage you could season a braise meat in it, one question. One question only before it gets rude and it gets gossipy.

_CB77:_ Han?

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

Chan takes them to a steakhouse just off the river and close enough to the venue that they can walk. The prices are still tourist trap levels, but the atmosphere is more relaxed. They can hear each other talk, and take a minute to taste their food.

Yet and still, the three of them spend more time calculating the _correct_ meat to booze ratio than they actually do eating.

Being just barely underage, Han goes all in on food, and banking on Changbin and Chan to buy him something to drink from the nearest Family Mart or Seven Eleven. Changbin sips on the cheapest beer on the menu, and orders a decent portion of meat. Chan, after much, much deliberation, decides that all good things in life are balanced. So, he orders a reasonable amount of meat and a nice Suntory on the rocks.

Sitting next to Han in the booth here and now is different than sitting next to Changbin at the coffee shop. Where Changbin felt warm and comfortable, Han feels stifling and illicit. Touch and go in the most literal sense. Before the waitress can even bring water, Han’s yawning and stretching his arm across his shoulder. The childish action is only brought downward when he uses the opportunity to tickle at Chan’s armpit.

Chan’s retaliation is equally childish and unrefined, he drags his finger across his tongue and goes for Han’s ear.

Han jerks back and bumps the condiments on the table with his elbows.

Pleased, Changbin notes, “Ah, we made you feel left out Chan. You want to be the reason we get kicked out of somewhere.” 

“Ah—No? I just,” Chan interrupts himself with a laugh.

“I surrender, I surrender,” and just like that Han slip slides from mischievous to docile by grabbing Chan’s arm, and tucking himself up underneath it.

Then, he murmurs softly, “you smell good.”

Which, he’s pretty certain is a lie. In these clothes today alone, he’s ridden his bike, run up and down the river in the high afternoon sun, and spilled half a can of Mango juice down his shirt.

Obstinate, like the way he insists confirmation that a joke is good, or that he’s correct in the face of a bold faced lie, Han insists with his body that Chan is constantly, and consciously aware of him. Traces little, absent minded circles on his flank with the tip of his finger when he forces Chan to hug-hold him. Underneath two layers of denim even, it’s electric when their legs rub together.

“It’s a good thing I’m not the jealous type,” and although Changbin’s voice is tipped with faux venom, he looks at both of them now with a grin that’s wide, smug, and toothy. Chan can’t quite make the distinction between shit eating and cat with canary.

Maybe Changbin can’t decide either.

When the waitress returns to the table, she brings an enormous plate of red-raw beef and clicks on the switch at the fan over top of them.

Chan takes it upon himself to take the tongs, spread the small square of tallow across the hot grill, and start preparing the meat for them.

“Hey, let me try next,” Changbin insists.

“Sure,” so he moves thin strips of beef to one of the nearby plates and hands Changbin the tan colored tongs, the tips already covered in charred black brown fat.

When the meat has cooled slightly, he takes a piece between his fingers and takes bite, end still perched between his fingers. “Try it. It’s really, really good.”

 Han grabs his wrist with both hands, pulls his morsel toward his mouth. In principle, it’s not that _unsexy._  His fingers brush against Han’s lips. Undeniably human, but never graceless, Han accepts the food, chews, swallows, and laps at the slight sheen of grease left upon his lips.

Nevertheless, real versus imagined, their actions have the same effect on Changbin, who looks pleased. Like when he and Changbin kissed.

Oh.

“Oh my god, that’s really good. C’mon Changbin, cook some more. You said you would.”

* * *

 

_August 12 th, 1997 _

_Changbin:_ I see you on .rec a lot. That’s where I got your ID # from. So, I hope you don’t mind me messaging you. It’s just that…It doesn’t seem to warrant it’s own thread. Plus, you seem competent, unlike a lot of other people on here posting about orange soda and what to get their boyfriends for Christmas.

_CB77:_ Sorry it took me awhile to respond. I was too busy drenching my Yamaha in orange soda and asking around for a Christmas gift for my boyfriend.

_CB77:_ Seriously though Changbin? Like Seo_Changbin from .rec?

_CB77:_ It’s just that like. I also like what you post. I’ve been super into electronic lately and missed a bunch of stuff from…literally every other genre. Your thread was really good. I’m still getting CDs from the library from that list.

_Changbin:_ Go on…Flattery will get you everywhere.

_Changbin:_ Oh wait. I wanted to ask you a question. I got my hands on a Roland JV 1080. It’s _supposed_ to have expandable wave boards, but I’m having some problems.

_CB77:_ NICE!!! Let’s see what I can do.

_CB77:_ Also? Who uses their whole name on a message board? Isn’t that like dangerous? People could just find you. Kill you. Kidnap you. Steal the coupons out of your mail that you actually want to lose.

_Chanbgin:_ If my produce mailer goes missing I will call the police.  

_Changbin:_  What if someone with a username like CowDestroyer13 rec’d you some great albums? Why should CowDestroyer13 get the credit when there’s a man behind the façade, a man named Seo Changbin?

* * *

 

When the table has been cleared of plates and the checks have been passed around, Chan reaches for his wallet, and his license falls out.

“Whose Chris?” Han snaps up the card and stares at his picture.

Usually? Usually he’d feel just a hint of embarrassment if someone saw a photo that was taken all the way back before he left Sydney for Seoul. But…these guys have seen his photo on the elementary school’s website. Nothing, not even his greasy sixteen-year-old face can, be worse than the photo of him at 21 wearing the kind of outfit that’s most fashionable in retirement homes and rocking a coif that’s straight out of a Sunday school class. So, he allows Han to gawk without interruption.

“I don’t know,” Chan snaps up Han’s wallet, which rests precariously on table’s edge. “Whose Jisung, and why do you have his wallet Han?”

“That’s my twin,” he fires right back.

“This charming man,” Changbin pulls a few bills from his own wallet, places them onto the small plastic tray alongside his check, and then slaps his wallet flat onto the table. The transparent compartment with his own ID proudly faces upward. “Is me, Seo Changbin.”

This Changbin, the one in the photo, hasn’t grown into his face or his body. “A-hundred and seventy-six centimeters huh?”

“Yeah, I slouch a lot.”

 “Your arms drag you down, and make your posture bad. I mean they look so heavy.”

“Yeah, what this guy says,” Changbin is quick to agree.

“And this is my natural hair color,” Chan gestures to the frosted hair he’s fought so hard to keep that he rides his bike 4 kilometers one way to see the old woman who _used_ to do hair for a living in Tokyo in the 70s.  

But they look good together, Han and Changbin.

If it’s going to be like _this._ This thing, obtuse, unwieldy, and absolutely enthralling thing without a name…Chan supports it.

Albeit, with a few _heavy_ revisions.

It isn’t to say that he doesn’t _trust_ Changbin. He’s smart as hell, spits fire, but flows like water, but…he’s heard abolut dozen or more self-inflicted disasters. Nose that looked like a butt. Sneezed too loud. Didn’t like “legendary” crust punk band Lazybone. Liked Lazybone “too much” and wanted Changbin to drop everything to follow them on tour. Nipple piercings. It doesn’t take much to get your heart broken by a certain Seo Changbin.

And Han? Han would make a great accomplice, but he’s not exactly sure that he’s fully aware of what’s going yet.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen you guys coordinate this well since you got banned.”

* * *

_December 23rd, 1997_

_Subj:_ MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR SEOCHANGBIN—JOne

_Re MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR_ : He’s only temp banned. Admin wasn’t in the wrong, he broke the rules, and so are you—Dietcokelover179

_Re MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR_ : Rule #6 no group or artist bashing. Critical opinions are welcome. Openly shaming someone for their preferences is not—tankpony

_Re MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR:_ Sure, JOne is breaking a rule, but I think his frustration is valid. Look at it this way. Admin purposefully made a rule about personal information after the argument with SeoChangbin. Even I’ve violated that rule. You can’t look through the thread, it’s now locked and deleted, but none of the content broke the rules. He’s a regular, well liked contributor to the community. Banning can only hurt this group, and there’s only a few Korean speaking music boards as it is.  –CB77

_Re MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR:_ Changbin didn’t break any rules until he posted a 2000 word essay on why Morrissey sucks. –Admin

_Re MORRISSEY SUCKS JUSTICE FOR:_ Wait, is this about this guy that wanted answering machine tapes? It’s like kind of weird, but not that weird. –LimeyThePirate

* * *

_July 18 th, 1998_

“Whaaaat?” Han looks at him now with big wide eyes that shine with a certain kind of anxious eagerness. Like he knows that Chan knows, and he knows that Changbin knows, but he isn’t completely sure if he himself knows whatever secret it is that the three of them have passed around and cobbled together piecemeal stitch by stitch. “We’ve always worked together like a well-oiled machine.”

“Just like we’ve always hated Morrisey,” Changbin adds.

“You just referenced his music Changbin?”

His face hurts from smiling and laughing _so_ much. “Anyway, we should decide what to do next. I’m not opposed to getting there early.”

 “Hey, hey mom, can I hold my ticket on the way? I promise I won’t lose it,” Changbin asks cheekily.  

 “Yeah,” Han adds, drumming his fingertips on the table top. “Chan you must be so excited. They’re like your favorites.”

“Yeah,” Chan responds to both Changbin and Han with a single response. He reaches for his bag, “I think they’re good tickets.” Unzip the internal pouch where he put his pencil case, which where he kept them on his desk leading up to the concert…Strange, they’re not there. “I’ve seen shows there before, there aren’t really bad seats.” Okay, so they’re in the outside pouch. Less likely place, but he’s stashed things there before.

“Yeah, the record store by campus has a decent amount of Japanese imports, but it was nice to know where to start,” Changbin offers a rare, direct, compliment that isn’t shrouded in any level of obfuscation.

He can’t even enjoy it.

“You go to Hyang Records Chan?”

“A few times I—” Honestly, Chan always assumed it’d be leaving a kid somewhere on a field trip. Or…Accidentally kickstarting a heart attack in one of the octogenarians that live on the island. So…in some ways, the fact that his big mega fuck up is _anything_ other than one or both of those two things is kind of…a relief?

“You Han?” Changbin asks.  

“No.”

“I’ll have to take you there for a date some time if you ever come home.”

* * *

_January 9 th,  1998  _

_Changbin:_ I for one think it’s a great idea. That’s not just me being petty.

_CB77_ : I’d love to, I just I don’t know if I have time for that. I’m moving soon to finish my practicum so I can graduate. Then…I’m graduating.

_Changbin:_ I understand that starting a community is a big time sink. Don’t forget you have two overeager and expertly opinioned people without a platform right now that wouldn’t mind pitching in. In terms of Korean music boards, there’s .rec, .alt, .vinyl. That’s it. There’s nothing specific for people who make music.

_Changbin:_ In terms of gauging interest, I think it’s there. From what I hear, a few more people got banned for really bullshit reasons.

_CB77:_ But let’s consider the important questions. How many answering machine tapes did you get?

_Changbin:_ I’m up to five, and thriving.

_JOne:_ I don’t know how any of this works, but I see ads sometimes in the directory I have for server space? I can help with that.  In terms of getting people to actually join…. it might be better coming from you. Since...we’re banned. Even if we made new accounts, you’ve got a couple hundred posts and a _lot_ of clout.

_CB77_ : Yeah, we’ll need some other people to join on right away. Who all could we get to come with us? There’s Brian. He’s good.

_Changbin:_ Your boyfriend Chan, even though he joined and posted twice. 

_JOne:_ Your little Joey from Australia. 

_CB77:_ Yeah, and the Wurlitzer fanboys.

_Changbin:_ Yeah, and they like you.

So, Changbin finds some code packages online. Chan tweaks the code so that it looks _just_ right. Han gets them a domain. Together, they make han.exp.music. A Korean board for musicians.

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

Maybe he read it in a book once. Maybe he saw it on television, or Chan talked about it from one of his classes; he’s not really sure. All he knows is there’s this thing called fight or flight, and it’s pretty self-explanatory. Except…Except his is absolutely broken, maybe just like him.

Sitting next to Chan makes him feel like he’s one tickle-knee bump away from a half chub. They’re not even doing anything, but the weird burn that happens in his belly button same as when he’s kissing…well it happens anyway.

He’s like so, so into guys, and it scares him so much. Even now when he’s with two guys who are into guys, at least one of which is into him, it’s scary. And maybe it’s just easy to go back to what he knows.

The waitress returns to their table with three checks on little lacquer trays. She’s got her hair pulled into pigtails, and a dozen or more rings spread across her fingers. In the center, a thin silver band partially, but not completely, obfuscates a purple-black tattoo. Probably done at home, probably something she regrets.

She’s pretty, but she’s made even prettier when he thinks about the way that he stopped holding onto Chan, but Chan didn’t stop holding onto him. She becomes the hottest woman on Earth when Changbin’s looking at him hungrily like they haven’t had dinner yet. Like their plane crashed in a mountain range and casual cannibalism is the only option.

Spread him onto a cracker with jam, cause he’s into it.

But it’s scary. Plane crashes and cannibals level scary.

So for him, his instinct is more like…Flight or fuck. No, scratch that. Flight and fuck. He flees by trying to fuck.

Something that he wants very badly, but is too afraid to chase after, is close enough to touch right now.

That’s never going to work. So, when the waitress comes back….

_“Cash or card?”_ Some language is universal.

There’s a part of him that wants nothing more than get a better look at that little tattoo. Preferably when her middle finger is thrown up at him in rage. Piss off Changbin, and make Chan whisper exhausted apologies under his breath

“Girl you are finer than the print on my black card’s statement.”

Some language is universal. She doesn’t need to know he leered at her in Korean to understand.

Too bad it doesn’t have the desired effect. Chaos unfolds around him, and he doesn’t even get the chance to lead to his own demise this time.

“Oh no.”

“What’s wrong?” Changbin asks.

Chan speaks rapidly, “The tickets. I put some stuff in a locker at the train station so my bag would be lighter. I had my beat-up shoes on, and I changed them because,” Chan pauses for a moment like he’s purposefully omitting a part of the story. “I had the tickets in my shoe for safe keeping, and I moved them into my old shoes when I was on the Ferry.”

He can’t say a damn thing. He’s got like three copies of his ID card sitting on his desk at home because he keeps losing and finding his own.

Changbin sounds frighteningly unbothered. “How far is it back to the station?”

“Ah—” Chan looks at his watch and back at them, and back to his watch.

Just because he’s special, and just because he’s lucky, the waitress comes back with a particularly pinched scowl on her face. He knows it oh, so, well.  So, he takes the black cloud that Chan temporarily summoned over their heads, shakes hit hard until it rattles, and just lets the downpour happen.

_“Ah, I’m sorry,”_ she hands him back his card, but he knows. “ _Your card has been declined.”_

“Han? Han she said--”

More than sadness, or pain, he hates being angry the most. In pain and in sadness, you can find parts of yourself that you didn’t know about before, but anger? Anger makes it feel like parts of himself, parts that are so important, they should be immutable, become lost.

Teeth grit, nails biting into the soft flesh of his palms. Han’s more lost than this morning when he took the wrong train. “Why does she always have to do this?”

“What?”

“Whenever Rania get’s really mad at me she freezes my credit cards. Everything is in her name.” 

* * *

_March 9 th, 1998_

_JOne:_ Channie, I knwo you’re not online right now because it’s late. 

_JOne:_ But I wish you were.

_JOne:_ I keep looking at that picture of you. The one where you look like a missionary trying to sell me a bible.

_JOne:_ I’d buy a bible form you.

_JOne:_ Ur really hot.

_March 10 th, 1998_

_JOne:_ Hey. Sorry about that. I got kinda drunk at a party last night.  

* * *

 

Changbin really, really likes these guys. Like liked them before, but to see it happen in real life is just a work of art. They move at his pace. Good intentions, horrible execution. The only thing missing from this nicely developing clusterfuck is his own unique contribution. But he’s not worried though. He always, always finds a way.

After he and Chan fumble to cover Han’s tab, they trail behind Chan who darts toward the station. The world becomes the sound of their shoes pounding against the pavement, the diamond blue-red pattern of the underside of Chan’s soles, and the burn in his chest. Swipe their train passes, and crowd into each other. Han first, then Chan with his back to Han’s chest, and then Changbin in last chest to chest with Chan.

There’s no still so agonizing, no quiet so terrifying, than that which emerges from three people who toe the line between exhaustion, frustration, and exhilaration. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

If he put his arms forward he’d be able to pass over Chan and Han’s shoulder’s and tap the business man standing behind them. With each sway and each jostle of the train, another man tugs upon the arm strap with all of his might to keep his body weight off of Changbin.

Yet, the kind of chaos that should brew when this many people are jam packed together never erupts. Dead silence is interrupted ever so slightly on the train. A mother desperately tries to hush her agitated baby. School girls titter and giggle to one another softly, but their voices barely raise beyond a whisper.

Chan stares intently at Changbin, like he expects him to do something. Changbin stares intently at Han, as if he’d actually provide an explanation for what the fuck just happened.

A secret, bubbling tension Is threaded through every person, even them, in this train car. The stranger’s tension becomes their tension. Their tension surrendered to the crowd. Pulled tight, the thread snaps at the first stop after they get on, after they’ve had the chance to catch their breath, and their hearts stop pounding in their ears.

Chan won’t stop apologizing. “Ah, I’m so sorry this happened,” Chan runs his hand through his hair for lack of anything better to do with it in the cramped space where arm straps are hard to comeby. “Had everything planned out, and then—”

“Chan, I’m pretty sure I was going to be here whether there was a concert or not. Whether that was getting lost in the middle of nowhere trying to find you, or dragging you to some shitty theme park with my family, or just sitting in that cafe drinking stale coffee until we got kicked out. I feel like Han probably doesn’t feel much different.”

Han with bitten lip, glassy eyes, and thousand yard stare barely manages a, “Yeah”. Physically, he’s here with them, but mentally he’s back in Malaysia begging forgiveness for a transgression he probably didn’t even commit.

“I just feel bad,” which he kind of understands. They’re gonna miss the opener for sure, and that’s where the music no one knows about happens. Except, Chan’s said it a half dozen time.  

The air on his tongue tastes damp and stale. He closes his mouth, wets his tongue, and “Chan, you don’t have to feel guilty when you fuck up. Fucking up looks good on you.”

“Listen,” brow arched, but his tone never rises above the quiet whisper that is acceptable for the train. “I’m sure we’re all tired. It’s been a very long day, and I added to that—”

Suddenly, mild irritation blossoms outward. A pinprick of blood to a vibrant poison flower. He doesn’t like it when people give him an out. The guy that he went home with and said that he could top when he got cold feet. His parents when they bribed him with a brand new Yamaha when he got an honest to god citation for loitering when he spent all day at the supermarket recording samples. Woojin, that one time when he chalked everything Changbin said to being drunk.

Chan, I’ve swallowed the past five apologies. After so many, they taste like trash. You’re allowed to fuck up.”  

* * *

 

_October 31 st, 1997_

_JOne:_ um, it’s 8 P.M. where are you? Why are you online? You have a _date_ tonight.

_Changbin_ : I went on the date. Now I’m back, waiting on Woojin to pick me up.

_JOne:_ I thought tonight was gonna be the night tho.

_Changbin:_ Um, well yeah. We got to talking, and it turns out he definitely used to date my friend. My best friend. Woojin. He used to date Woojin. I couldn’t go through with it.

_JOne:_ Not even one and done?

_Changbin:_ Nope.

_JOne:_ So, you’re not gonna fuck him. You’re gonna go hang out with the guy he used to fuck. The guy that you hang out with _all_ the time, and also…not fuck him.

_JOne:_ Look, I love you. I love you so much, and I want you to get your dick wet. But, that’s kind of telling isn’t it?

_Changbin:_ Yep. Thanks for the insight. Love you too.

* * *

 

_July 18 th, 1998_

He’s not sure exactly _what_ portion of his tirade yanks Han out of his stupor, but like a bar fight at closing time, he stumbles out swinging.

“Changbin, you don’t need to be a dick just because you’re this close,” as if he wants to emphasize his point, he rocks upward on the balls of his feet to try to lean over Chan’s shoulder and get closer to him. “To having your pick, me or Chan. I know you’re ready to shut it down, just like with all those other guys, but you don’t have to be mean about it.” 

“Han,--” Chan interrupts. For a moment, the tension is pushed back down.  

More people get onto the train, and not enough get off. So even though all of then wear the harsh expressions that scream _get away_ they’re only jammed closer together.

Changbin can taste the acidic bile of his words rise from the back of his throat _before_ he speaks. His mouth gets watery, and he hasn’t been sick in a really long time, but the word vomit that spews from his mouth is a damn good facsimile for the real thing. “Han, you can’t even get in the same room as a remotely attractive woman without whipping your dick out to protect yourself from whatever it is you’re afraid of.”

“Ah for Christs’ sake, the two of you would try to have a pissing contest in the desert, wouldn’t you?”

* * *

 

_July 4 th, 1998_

_CB77:_ Can you check on our boy?

_Changbin:_??? yes? But I feel like you’d know just as well, if not better than I do what’s going on.

_CB77:_ Yeah, but I feel like we might need to combine forces. Get him from both sides.  Something is going on there.

_Changbin:_ Yeah, I think so too. Talk about it in Osaka?

_CB77:_ Maybe, if it comes up. Might be a lot of pressure. It’s our first meeting, but we’ve been talking behind you for a long time, and we think your living situation is weird, and possibly harmful.

* * *

 

Changbin looks up at him with his impossibly big brown eyes. They’re so close he can see individual, impossibly long lashes as Changbin bats them at him like him said something cute, or something clever, and expects a reaction.

Charming, even when he’s about to smack him upside the head with the truth.

“You’re just latching onto this so we don’t ask you about the girl.”

Of course, he’s pissed off about the way that Changbin talked to him and Chan.

Of course, he’s pissed off, in a puffed chest, muscle pounding kind of way about the way that Chan was clearly his first choice. But…

Han doesn’t call him baby _just_ flirt with him. He’s used to the tantrums and is more than used to letting it ride. What he’s most angry with is how right Changbin is, and how fucked up it all is, and how nice they are about it.

It’s just that when things are good with her…convertible with the top down, hands between her thighs, no panties…it’s like he’s almost close enough to cup the world in the palm of his hand. When things are bad, everything’s almost the same, just knocked off center. If she called him up right now, she’d answer with a coy giggle. Ask him if he wanted to know what she was wearing. The answer: lace, or satin, or nothing at all. Ask if he was having a good time….and if he was missing her.

He’s pretty sure he would. Really, honestly, would miss her if she ever gave him the chance.  

Where Changbin spent everything upfront, Chan proceeds with caution.  “It is something we’re worried about. What she did wasn’t alright. You’re _traveling_ right now. What if you didn’t have any cash?” What if we weren’t able to meet up with you, or spot you?”

“You’re worried? Both of you? So, you guys just talk about me? What makes that okay?”

“Probably nothing, but we’re human, and we do. We talk about Changbin, and I’d bet all the money in my pocket right now that the two of you talk about me. We care about each other, we annoy the hell out of each other.” Chan tries to turn to look him in the eyes, but train, still packed to the brim doesn’t quite allow it, yet Chan’s sidelong glance is enough. Enough to make him feel wanted, enough to make him feel afraid.

“It’s because I like,” God this sounds stupid, but he says it to Channgbin with conviction anyway, because blaming it on the paranormal seems easier than confronting his feelings. “Kissed you. She just, she just has this sixth sense okay? Like omens, and visions, Like she knows when I’m fucking around.”

“Do you love her?”

Han can’t see Chan’s face right now, and it’s probably for the best. But, he does see the way that Changbin’s eyes shift upward, and slightly to the right, switching from holding his gaze to locking eyes with Chan. Just that one little movement makes his skin crawl. Not because of whatever pity they have for him, but because he’s allowed himself to get into this position at all.

“I think so,” His voice cracks, because like…he can tell how fucked up it sounds.

“Okay,” Changbin looks at him like he believes him. “Does she love you?”

They don’t understand, even Chan who knows the most. “I still need to call her.” In that moment, he has to make a choice between keeping his voice steady, and sniffing up the drip that he’s been holding in place with all of his might. Keep staring daggers at his friends, or dab at the pinprick teardrops that sting at his face. “She’s probably worried…and I need my cards for the rest of this trip.” In his pocket he can feel a few hundred yen coins, and he can hope that’s enough for short international phone call.

“No, you don’t,” Chan insists. “You already have a weekend pass for the train. You can stay with me and Changbin tonight. We’ll just get cheap stuff to eat. We should have enough to spot you if we’re careful.” 

 “Han,” Genuine concern melted with the kind of frustration that comes from not knowing how to help, Changbin sounds the way that his mother sounded the last time they spoke on the phone, and it only upsets him more. “Just tell us what the hell is going on. If you’re honest…”

“You wanna know?” The train pulls into another stop, and the throngs of people finally, _finally_ empty. When the line of people directly behind him step backward, and Chan turns around simultaneously, it throws his precarious balance off kilter. _Step, step, step_ backward, the sound of his sneakers smacking against the floor in a deafening thunder. Freefall. Until Chan catches him by the wrist and pulls him back upright.

“My dad’s job moved us out to Malaysia a few years ago. Then, in March, right before I was supposed to graduate high school, they called him back. They stayed through my graduation and went home. I didn’t.”

“So, what happened?” Its easy for anyone to see that isn’t the end of the story, but it still feels genuinely good when Chan presses him for more answers.

Shuffling off of the train is somehow more claustrophobic than the train car. The throngs of people move forward, but not quickly enough. At the turnstyle, all hell breaks loose as they run up the stairs. In that moment, he’s freed. Hot tears stream down his face, and his lungs feel like they’re on fire.

Up and out of the station, and to the long row of freestanding coin lockers outside. It feels like they’ve been on the train for forever, and a whole day has passed. The high summer sky was shielded by grey clouds somewhere between departure and arrival. The air smells thick and wet, and the wind blows in short uneven gusts that turn the leaves on the trees the wrong way.

Faint droplets of rain fall from the sky.

Chan stops in front of a locker and fidgets with the heavy metal keypad to enter his PIN to open the locker.

“I didn’t want to leave. My visa was still good for up to a year after I graduated so I could…do something, I guess. College, training, an internship. I really didn’t do _any_ of it. I took like one art class, and I pretty much failed it. I _just_ met Rania at a show one night. She took me back to her place…and I just…didn’t leave.”

The truth, as shallow as it may be, is laid bare not only for Chan and Chagbin, but for himself.

“Seriously?” Changbin interjects.

Chan doesn’t interrupt directly. Just reaches into the locker, and flashes three white, blue, gray and orange tickets.

“All this time….I was convinced it was something deep and tragic. I thought maybe your parents caught you with a guy or something. Kicked you out, but an ambiguously older woman took you in, and you spent your days repressing yourself.” Of course Changbin thought that. He’s always got an explanation in his back pocket

Not nearly that interesting.” Han laughs and a large snot bubble blossoms and bursts under his nose.

 “I was worried too.” Chan extracts a small hand towel from his pocket, cyan blue with small green long necked dinosaurs. “I still am.”

Chan wipes Jisung’s nose in a way that’s expert. Precise. The least sexy thing ever.

 “This is a bad way to show you how I feel, but I’ve recently been informed that it’s okay to mess up.”

So how come? How come it’s so damn sexy?  Chan snaps the hand towel back into his pocket, and little green dinosaurs sticking out of his pockets like tufts of grass. His fingers thread and bunch into the orange fabric of Jisung’s shirt. Sexier still is the way that Chan gives him a chance. A chance to remember, a chance to back out. Their breath mingles together, damp meeting hot damp, on their parted lips and-- 

He’s thought about kissing Chan for a really long time. Maybe ever since he waited, and waited, and waited for blurred image to clear and download. He imagined that the cute boy wearing an ugly sweater smelled of tiger balm and Werther’s hard candies, and wanted him anyway.

But here’s the thing, and maybe it’s the very best thing of all. Chan doesn’t kiss him like tiger balm and Werther’s hard candies.

Kissing Chan feels honest. Like he’s never had anything to prove in his entire life and won’t have to ever again. Caught perpetually between languid and urgent, Chan kisses like he’s begging Jisung for something so simple that he doesn’t even know how to ask.

The kiss breaks with Jisung’s own desperate hiccup sob, but the rain falls heavier now soaking through to his shoulders, and obscures just how vulnerable he is right now. 

He’d feel upset when the kiss ended, if it weren’t for Changbin playing with the fabric of his belt loop, and pulling him close.

 Stance wide, one hand on his hip, the other, heavy cast draped over his shoulder like an anchor keeping him grounded. Changbin kisses him like he’s offering himself and nothing more. Confidence that can be backed up a hundred times, but folds willingly to something sweeter and something softer.

In that moment, he’s glad, real glad that its him kissing Changbin. Cause a stupid person would think that Changbin doesn’t kiss like a virgin, but that’s just not true. Changbin kisses him like a person that’s waited a very long time. Waited for the right ~~person~~ people, and wants him very much.

He’s real glad that it’s him kissing Changbin, cause it’s fresh and it’s new, and god…It’s so nice to not have to go through _this_ alone.

Changbin pulls back, and all Han can do is watch Changbin and Chan. Clothes soaked, hair matted to their faces, they kiss. He’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t hard as hell to watch them even though he knows that its not his turn anymore.

The weak ink from Chan’s bingo blotter, never washed up from this morning, runs down their arms in streams of red, and blue and green. It’s only then that he notices the smudges of paint that streak down his own arms, and the place on his shirt where Changbin’s cast rested moments ago. Proof that they touched him, he vibrant colors trickle downward and merge together.

No sooner than the storm shower begins, cyan blue pushes back against gray, and the rain ends abruptly. Separating the past from the present, but never addressing which is which, a brilliant rainbow bisects blue from gray across the glowing crepuscular sky.

 


	4. Brand New Love Song

* * *

_May 30 th, 1998_

All of Chan’s life, he’s been from somewhere else. From what his parents tell him, he was born in Sydney. But that doesn’t stop people from giving him exaggerated smiles and elevated voices, and compliments that his English is ‘ _so good.’_

Cause it doesn’t matter if he’s remembering back when he was five, or when he was fifteen. His mom always felt self-conscious about her English. Chan can remember Saturdays at the community center, his mom going down the hallway to the right, and him to the left so they could each get better at what came naturally to the other, English and Korean. Only people from somewhere else had to do that.

Except, when he went to Seoul for college, he wasn’t from there either. People _still_ treated him like he was from somewhere else. Granted, it took longer now. They didn’t just decide it by looking at him,but came to understand it when he opened his mouth and accent spilled out.

Growing up, he met plenty of other people from somewhere else: Manilla and Shanghai and Colombo. So, he knows what they do to try to be from _here._ Wherever here may be. Mahalia to Mary, and Zhang to Zach. Since he was doing it the other way around Chris became Chan.

 Chan loves anyone from someplace else automatically and unconditionally.

Of course, he fell in love with Bam Bam for plenty of other reasons: music, dancing, conversations that go on for hours and hours in diverging and reconvening paths of English and Korean. But it certainly helped to break the ice…Two guys from somewhere else with four names between them.

By the time he makes it to Japan, he’s pretty used to being from somewhere else.

He’s riding back home after work when he catches the letters on the plastic red, white, and blue name tag. It reads, “Jaejin,” and it’s a proud and obstinately Korean name in an ocean of Takashis and Yuis. It’s easy to understand that the man who stocks the vending machine outside of the post office is from somewhere else.

 “You got a coin?” He stops stocking the machine and offers Chan a warm can of Pepsi. “I’m sorry there aren’t any cold ones.”

“You got diet?” Chan responds in Korean.

The guy’s eyes light up like Chan’s just given him a fat stack of cash on Christmas morning, and it’s so rare to make someone feel so good by doing so little. “For you? Yeah.” And then, “oh my god I think I’ve forgotten how to talk.”

“Yeah, me too. It’s been awhile.”

“Hey, um, it’s my first time on this route. Do you know where the Peach Tavern is? They’ve got an order there, and these directions don’t make any sense.”

“Yeah um,” Chan rakes his hands up through his hair at the nape of his neck. His hair is damp. So are his clothes from the humidity.

He’s not been here all that long, but to an outsider, Chan possesses a certain kind of sacred knowledge, secrets that only become legible with time. He knows that the ferry is always late, but the bus is always on time. He knows to not eat of the food served at the tavern, only order drinks. The cook retired years ago, and what is served to guests is straight out of the frozen section at the supermarket.  Chan knows that Mrs. Son, despite being in her 70s is having an affair with the barber who is only in his 40s. If you go into the video rental store and asked to be directed toward the “foreign” section, you’ll get pointed to the back room where the porn is stored.

Someone who knows all of these secrets, is basically someone from here.

 “It might just be easier if I go with you.” He has selfish motivations immediately. If he gets a ride there it’s only a ten minute cycle home from the tavern…give or take the time it takes to have a beer.

“Really? That’d be great. I’ll put your bike in the truck.”  Jaejin’s sleeves are pushed up almost to the shoulder. The rectangular shape of a pack of cigarettes pokes out from the rolled fabric.  His arms are huge, and his chest is broad. He lifts the bike up like its nothing.

Chan feels it, sour in the pit of his stomach when he pulls himself up onto the scratchy blanket like seat covers. He tells himself over and over again as they chug down the road that he isn’t, but he knows. He is.

What they say to one another isn’t important, so long as they can relish in the feeling of understanding _without_ complication.

The Peach is Jaejin’s last stop on the island, but Chan informs him that the ferry isn’t due for another two hours. One beer becomes two.

Sunset on the island means watching the tide wash back in and feeling the air become heavy and acrid like brine. It means hearing the cicadas hum to life. Tonight, Chan experiences all of it from within the cab of Jaejin’s truck. From this angle, all of it is the same just a few feet higher. The perspective is changed slightly, and therefore, a little bit uncanny.

The sun unzips the sky’s bright blue dress, exposes her pink orange negligee, and reveals dark purple blue skin. The seat cover in Jaejin’s truck feels even scratchier against Chan’s exposed skin.

* * *

_July 18 th, 1998_

Changbin’s like a good luck charm, and Han, like a weapon. Chan wields them both to their advantage. There must be something terrifying about a small man with a neon pink cast and thousand-yard stare. Must be something equally terrifying about another with red tearstained face, because somehow they part the throngs of people inside the venue and get pushed up to the balcony railing.

“Ah, Channie,” Changbin squeaks when he rolls the edge of his icy cold plum chu-hi down his neck. “Stop it,” but he arches his back against Chan nonetheless. 

Whatever clammy cold had crept into their skin in the rain dissipated when they clambered inside of the venue. The stifling hot in the room, like a punch in the gut, knocks the air out of his lungs.

“Chan, Chan, Chan,” Han rakes his fingers upward exposing the nape of his neck. “Do me. Do me.”

Chan complies, rolling the can down his neck, and when he’s finished he leans in close, blowing air against Han’s cool damp skin. “How’s that?”

“Better,” and in spite of the heat, Han leans back into him too. Chan loops one arm around Han’s neck, and the other around Changbin’s.

Han extracts a cheap paper fan from the depths of his cargo shorts pockets, and how the cheap 50-yen piece of folded paper and plastic wasn’t drenched in the storm will forever remain parts mystery and miracle. Han fans air backwards towards Chan.

“Ha-an, do me,” and then towards Changbin at his request.

When he moved here, he told his mom that he was afraid. His Japanese wouldn’t be good enough, and he’d mindlessly bumble through his days, missing social milieu and violating norms.

His mother told him that was foolish. He’d had years of lessons, and that when she moved to Australia she only knew how to say, “Thank you, please, I’m sorry, an excuse me.” She assured him“all you really need to know is how to say please.”

Chan’s waited for so long to be _from here_. Whatever that may mean. But right now, Han and Changbin, and himself, are all here from somewhere else, and it feels really good. For the time being, he’s okay with being viewed as foreigners that speak too loudly, aren’t perceptive enough to learn the rules, and are easily enraptured by the gaudy baubles of tourist attractions. Three lost men, who can only ask with parched lips and poor accent, “please?”

Venue lights turn down low, and the stage lights turn up high surrounding the stage. On stage, three men play songs that three _other_ men have listened to dozens, if not hundreds of times, but together for the first time.

Attached to each song is a memory.

_Blues Drive Monster_ reminds him of getting drunk with Bam Bam on the tequila his parents sent him from their vacation to Mexico. They didn’t have a blender, and they didn’t have money for premade mix, and it was raining so hard they couldn’t be bothered to go get any limes. Instead, they made the world’s vilest “margaritas” out of concentrated lemon juice extracted from an ancient plastic lemon at the back of the fridge and ripped open Splenda packets.

One time during break, the two of them drove down the costal route all the way from Incheon to Sokcho over the course of a few days.  Whether they were in the car, or lugging the boombox out to the beach, or fucking in a roadside motel room that smelled like cigarettes and pine scented cleaner, _Moon is Mine_ was on repeat the whole way.

Attached to each song, of course, an event in the present. If he’s lucky, and if he pays attention, these moments in the now will become the memories of tomorrow. There’s the feeling of Changbin’s lips softly, sneakily, grazing against the pulse point of his neck during _Hybrid Rainbow,_ and Han placing his hand on his hip and his chest and mock slow dancing with him during _Patricia_.

These new, potential memories, well they don’t erase the older, more painful ones. Chan isn’t sure that he’d want that. Instead, they blend, and they meld, and they tie the past and the present and the future together into one long looped string that he can either trip over or wear around his neck proudly.

He hasn’t listened to the Encore song in so long. Attached to this song isn’t so much a memory, but a feeling. The band rolls into the chorus, and Chan looks from Changbin’s smooth lips, to Han’s cracked mouth. Each of them mouth along to the lyrics to a song that recently has felt so painful “ _Please, Mr. Lostman_.”

His heart skips a beat when he feels twin hands cup against each ear. Two noses nudge against his cheek, two pairs of lips brush against his ear. Together, they speak up over the sound of the noise, breathy and urgent along with the music, “please.”

* * *

_July 18 th, 1998_

Mirrors on the walls and mirrors on the ceiling. The love hotel set up reminds Changbin of one of the songs his dad pulled out of the grooves in a record. They can’t afford pink champagne on ice, but he’ll settle for the sore spot he’s sucked onto Han’s neck and the keep going-please stop chaffed feeling of Chan’s palm grinding against his cock beneath thick damp denim.

When he unlatches his mouth from Han’s neck, he sees a burgundy red mark blossom outward and fade gradually into Han’s perfect blushing red skin. Looking upward, Changbin’s head lolls drunkenly to the side. In the mirror, he catches Chan’s gaze, and together, they hold it in the mirror. 

In the split second, he’s pulled away. Han’s already started doing a number on the lobe of his ear, catching his earring in between his lips and tugging slightly. Feels amazing, but…”Han,” Changbin ribs him lightly in the side with his elbow. “Look,” and he leans backward into the shining gold rail on the perimeter of the elevator. The shining white rainbow light makes his eyes sting, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the sight of Chan’s palm on his crotch. Neither can Han. 

“Wow,” and without looking away from the mirror, Han gropes haphazardly toward Chan and Changbin.

Changbin and Chan catch each other’s gaze in the mirror and—and it’s like they know, without even saying it.

The rainbow prism elevator becomes the world’s dampest, sweatiest, neediest pinball machine as they come at Han from both sides and bounce off of the walls. Changbin threads his fingers into Han’s hair and pulls him in for a kiss as they crash into the side of the elevator. Slam against the door, and Chan pulls up Han’s shirt and rakes his hand down his chest. Ding of the bell, they damn near fall out ass over teakettle onto the faux luxe red gold carpet.

Chan fumbles for the key to the room

Han asks, “um, how many condoms do we have?”

With his hands on Han’s shoulders Changbin bounces up and down with a hyperactive almost childish energy. Why should sex be some serious, forlorn thing anyway? It hasn’t gotten him anywhere.  “I bought some all by myself this morning. Asked for them in perfect Japanese. Three.”

“Yeah?” Chan manages to get the door open, but only after he’s jiggled the handle and thrown his weight into it. “I have three too.”

“One in my wallet,” Han responds.

“Only one?” Chan laughs. “Ah, maybe we’ll have enough.”

“If I’d been told we were going to have an orgy—” Han quips

 There’s a rush to push into the room, but immediately after they all linger in the narrow gangway, fumbling to take off their shoes. First out of his shoes, Chan steps into the carpet, and sheds his shirt.  Changbin next. His cast slides against the wall as he tries to pull off his shoes. Han steadies him, and then shucks his own shoes.

“Does it count as an orgy with three?” Changbin asks.

Shirts are peeled away easily. Pants are another obstacle; the struggle is accented by the clink-pop of buttons and belt buckles. Wet clothes are shed to the floor with a wet, obscene sounding thwap. Roaming hands, without the barrier of thick damp fabric, halt at the sight of goose flesh piqued skin.

“I think technically that starts at four,” Chan responds.

In the room, there’s no more white prism light. No more mirrors. Just a normal hotel room with one really, really big bed and a whole lot of expectations. When they can no longer steal glances of one another, illicit and secret through the four mirrored walls, they have to look at one another face to face.

It’s kind of scary.

It’s kind of awesome.

Chan looks like something out of the crinkled, beat up copies of Playgirl he sold his soul for at the expat flea market. Dopey smile, giant fucking muscles, Changbin’s first reaction is that he wants to suck his cock and his second is that he wants to see who could bench press more.

Chan’s gaze is thoughtful, purposeful, and tinged with just as much hunger and fear as Changbin himself feels at that very moment. It’s scary and it’s enthralling, and so intense that all he can do is break away to steal furtive glances of Han.

Damp jeans bunched around his ankles, bent at the waist, Han pauses from getting undressed. Pants still bunched around his ankles, and stares right back at them both.

The rise-flutter-fall of all their chests are disjointed. All three of them so naked, all three of them so confused.

His old fear was actually going through with it. That’s all been balled up and thrown aside. Now, before him is a new fear, wrapped in bright pink cellophane. Don’t fuck it up.

The hard part, the part with the feelings and the confession, that’s over. So why the hell can’t he do anything?

Luckily, Han chases away the fear.  Pants still caught around his ankles, Han rises from his bent at the waist position.  “Oh my god. You guys are fucking ripped. Like you could sex bench press me. Fuck”

“Yeah.” Chan cocks an eyebrow at him, and Changbin knows exactly what to do. Goddamn. Maybe it’s a damn good thing there’s been an ocean between him and Chan, because he’s pretty sure they could be dangerous together. Very. Very dangerous.

“We could, couldn’t we Changbin?” Chan moves around so that he loops his arms underneath Han’s armpits.

Changbin goes for his ankles. They pick him up like he’s nothing at all, and carry him across the floor before unceremoniously dumping him onto the bed. Changbin makes short work of his rain soaked jeans. Together, Changbin and Chan tumble down onto the bed with Han.

A shower of laughter, a shower of kisses to warm their rain drenched bodies. Any bit of skin that he can manage to graze with his lips is kissed until someone pushes him back down and goes for his collar bones, or his stomach or his mouth.

 “So…Chan, what do we do now?” Han asks.

“Ah, well a lot of these places have game systems. We could play Golden Eye.”

“I think we’d have to call down to the front desk for a third controller,” Han fires right back. 

“Changbin, what do you think?”

 “What would he know?” Han asks.

“Yeah, what would I know?” Changbin uses his fake cute voice because it was made for moments like this. He crawls across the bed and into Han’s lap.  “Teach me. Please.”

“Oh my god.” Han covers his face, which runs crimson red in embarrassment, with his hands.

“I mean I fuck myself all the time on my giant dildo, but I just don’t know—” Changbin tugs at his wrist, trying to force Han to look at him.

Chan’s laughter interrupts Changbin. Again. Dangerous.

“What color is it?” Han mumbles pitifully and looks at Changbin through parted fingers.

Changbin gestures to his day glow pink cast. “It matches.”

“Wow,” Han looks at him like he’s cool or something, just for taking some fake cock. “So what are we doing?”

Changbin wants to kiss him again so he does. Captures his open mouth and sloppily shoves his tongue inside. “It’s difficult to say what I want. C’mere,” He gestures for Chan next, because he doesn’t want him to feel left out right? Their lips misalign, Changbin’s lower with Chan’s upper, and the next thing he knows he’s sighing into the kiss like some chick in the backseat. That’s how stupid and cock drunk Chan makes him feel.

“What, you’re the one who wanted Chan to take your virginity all nice and romantic.” Han says this as he grinds his cock into the cleft of Changbin’s ass. Han says this as he wraps his fist around Chan’s cock and pumps it slightly.

“I think Han should go first,” Chan’s voice is breathy underneath Han’s touch. Stomach drawn taut, lower lip bitten purple-red between his teeth, his eyes flutter open briefly only screw shut tight. It’s absolutely wonderful, and he wants to do that to Chan too.

Changbin shifts positions so that he’s seated, not in Han’s lap, but next to him and opposite Chan. His hand joins Han’s, and for a moment they agree that teasing Chan is the very best thing in the world. Tug his foreskin downward, and with a flick of the wrist they watch as the tip disappears again underneath a thin band of skin. Twist down again, and a shining bead of precum has appeared at the tip.

“Yeah, well me and Changbin just wanna play with your foreskin.”

“Ah,” It’s cool. Chan’s just real cool. Cause neither of them really know what they’re doing, but Chan makes them feel like they invented sex. Genuinely seems to feel like their clumsy touches are heaven.

And something about it is a bigger turn on than the feeling of Han’s cock pressed against his ass, or the soft little slip-sight moans that spill out from Chan’s mouth.

“If you’re not careful, I’ll cum,” Chan hums.

  
“Our dear-sex-leader Chan? From a hand job?”

“You guys are really, really hot. Okay?” Chan’s chest is flushed vibrant red. His lip is caught between his teeth. It’s perfect, and it’s amazing, and Changbin almost kind of wants that right now, for Chan to cum. Did that boyfriend of his ever notice how his skin does that? Did that nobody on that island, ever notice?

“Okay, okay, okay, we have to take our Binnie’s virginity.” Han stops touching Chan and pulls Changbin’s hand away too.

“So, do you want that?” Chan looks at Changbin, but holds Han’s wrists in his hands. “Han first?”

Changbin kisses Han again. Traces the line of Han’s lips with his tongue and dip inside to drink up the sugary sigh that Han gives him. “Yeah,” the kiss parts with a smack, and Changbin becomes acutely aware of how sore his lips are. Like he and Han melted together, and a part of him is still stuck on Han’s  slightly parted mouth. Did she ever? Did that old crow of a girlfriend ever feel this good with him? Did any of the girls he smooth talked ever feel _this way_ with him? “Yeah, I don’t know if we can trust this chronic masturbator to not blow his load _immediately_ ,” Changbin says gesturing to Han.  

“I am not a chronic masturbator!”

“Notice, he didn’t deny the other part,” Chan comments.

“Oh, come on. Enough with the sex interrogation,” Han begs.

“So, you’re denying that you had me go through an anime webring for hentai? I’ve got proof saved on a diskette Han, give it up.”

“You wanna bring yourself down this guy’s level man? Just fess up.” Chan playfully tweaks Han’s nipple. With the single action, chaos erupts between them anew. Slap-pinch-roll, they move about the bed. 

 “Don’t listen to him,” Someone’s tickling Changbin’s ribs, and someone else is touching his dick, and honestly fuck them both. “ _I’m_ the good cop. I get it man. Everybody jerks off to big anime titties.”

Another choir of laughter interrupts the obstinate eroticism that had been building between them. His face hurts from laughing so much, and he’s got a raging boner. All in all, it’s kind of like when Woojin told him to try having a beer in the shower. The contrast…well it shouldn’t work, but it does

* * *

 

It’s the kind of thing that’s kind of a lot of pressure, if he thinks about it really. Changbin and Han. Even if they never see one another again face to face, there’s a damn good chance they’ll remember him, or at least the idea of him, for a very long time. Maybe anybody else would feel just a little bit scared, but Chan?

He asked his date to the graduation formal with a dozen yellow roses and some balloons. The first guy he dated when he got to Seoul…he wrote down a hundred different things he liked about him on strips of paper and put them into a giant washed and rinsed kim-chi jar. Chan ran down nine flights of steps in their building to etch his and Bam Bam’s initials into some wet concrete with a paring knife, and got yelled at by the building superintendent. He’s more than okay with the idea of being a long-lasting memory, so long as it’s good.

Mouthing at the lobe of Chanbin’s ear earns him a disjointed moan, first sharp with pain and then long and low. Pleasure, but it’s so hard earned.

“For someone that likes to brag, how big was it?”

“Twenty—” Changbin stammers, short of breath at the intrusion. “Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three centimeters,” more kisses down Changbin’s neck. Each graze of his lips against along with the silent prayer that he hopes Changbin can relax. “That’s big. A lot bigger than my fingers. A lot bigger than me—” Chan’s breath hitches, breaking the illusion that he’s calm, collected, or has _any_ idea what he’s doing.

Han’s got one hand back on Chan’s cock, and he’s absolutely unable to stop talking, “Yeah, and like, Chan’s dick is big.” Boost to the ego aside, it’s hard to sweet talk Changbin when Han seems to be doing everything in his power to undo it.

Changbin lifts his head up from the rumpled duvet. “How relaxed would you be if you were on all fours and had not only one, but two people staring at your ass?” And, as if to reify his point, Changbin’s body tightens on the single digit he’s managed to work inside of Changbin.

“Okay,” recalibrate. Now. His finger slides out of Changbin, and he swats at his hip. “Other way. Over my lap.” They may only have this one chance to get it right. 

“Yes sir,” Changbin responds cheekily. His cock twitches against Chan’s thigh.

“Han, get in front of him and--.” When everyone’s moved into place, the rest happens easily and without further instruction. Hand splayed wide across the expanse of Changbin’s back, Chan pushes him down toward the duvet. Changbin latches onto Han’s cock, effectively providing a distraction for both Han and Changbin. “Don’t cum Han.”

“Yes sir!”  

* * *

 

The whole room smells like bubble gum, the kind that most often gets stuck in hair, pulls out loose baby teeth, and gets crammed underneath desks. The kind that comes in perfect little neon squares or shredded pieces in fake tobacco pouches. The whole room smells like bubble gum, and the sugary taste is thick on his tongue as he kneels on the bed with slack jawed wonder.

Changbin demanded “the pink one,” when Chan paid for the room and pointed at the little list of options on laminated paper.

Lips on the tip of his cock, Han can feel the tip hit Changbin’s soft palette.

Yesterday, Han would so be that bastard, hand on the base of Changbin’s neck, to push downward. Now? Now he’s got his fingers threaded into his hair and tries his hardest to pull _Changbin_ _back_ to keep him from gagging _._ Coming out to your bros just really changes you as a person, makes your heart fuller and your soul lighter.

All that change still isn’t enough to prevent the slight gagging noise that spills from the corners of Changbin’s mouth. Isn’t enough from stopping his dick from twitching when it happens.

“Easy baby—” but interrupts himself with a sharp inhale. Han traces Changbin’s plush lower lip with his thumb.

Changbin is a dangerously fast learner. Pulling back on his cock, he rests only the tip between his velvet lips and laps at the tip. Traces the ridge, and pulls more of him into his mouth. Insistent, even though he _knows_ he can’t take all of Han in at once.

“Oh, my God,” And it’s so easy to get swept up in the wet and soft hypnotic pattern of Changbin’s tongue. There’s pressure when Changbin slurps at the spit pooling in his mouth and a fraction of a second of a reprieve when Chan does something with his fingers that causes Changbin to wince ever so slightly.

Changbin’s probably going to fucking kill him, and Han probably doesn’t even care. He’s absolutely never had his dick sucked like this before in his entire life. It’s not like Changbin’s freakishly _good_ or anything. Can’t even fit his entire cock all the way inside of his mouth. It just feels _right._

God, he’s just gonna fucking nut in Changbin’s mouth, he’s--

“Hanni,” Chan’s voice is bright and filled with laughter. “You make the cutest face when you’re about to cum.”

Pull back, and Changbin pulls off with an obscene _pop_ and a disappointed sigh.

Cold air hits the tip of Han’s twitching cock. He doesn’t cum.

“C’mon. Let’s do this.”

Fucking, personal growth man.

His ears burn cayenne red at the way that Chan grabs him by the base of his cock, and all but guides him into Changbin, but…In a lot of ways, he’s kind of glad. Cause for a moment, probably a lot of moments, he was just _there._ He was just there, staring at the silken expanse of skin from Changbin’s sac to his hole. Dumbfounded, he slips a finger inside, and it shouldn’t be that tight right? Not when Chan just had his own fingers in there. Yet and still, Changbin twitches and moans at the slightest of touches and it’s so tight, and so wet and so hot, and _fuck._

“C’mon, Han. He needs you.”

No quip from Changbin, just a sharp inhale, and stifled moan.

Han feels from the base of his spine, melted through to the place just above his cock. Han _feels._ Pressure. Pressure. _Relief._ Han _feels._ But it’s so damn surreal when he looks down to see the head of his cock buried inside of Changbin.

Enveloped in warmth and in wet and drowning in the urgency that only comes from the bittersweet feeling of knowing that you’re living in a memory, Han screws his eyes shut and bites his lip until all he can see are camera flashbulb stars on the inside of his eyelids. He wants that image there for forever.

No sooner than it’s sealed away in memory, he forces his eyes back open. He’s buried to the hilt inside of Changbin now. The white band of the condom peeks out at the place where they’re joined making it look all that much more obscene.

It’d be so damn easy to nut right now. But—

Changbin and Chan are kissing again. In a mirrored image of the train earlier, Han stares back at Chan, but Chan’s long lashes weigh down his lids and give a secret glance just for Changbin. Changbin is wedged between himself and Chan, and his bright pink cast draped over Chan’s shoulder. Han cannot see the red-purple hue of Changbin’s kiss bruised lips. Can’t see his eyes blown wide with pleasure.

He knows that it’s wrong, and he knows that as much as he loves seeing them together, he wants all of Changbin and Chan’s hard-earned affection.

So he presses his fingers into Changbin’s jawline, pushing him back until he’s stealing a kiss from him right out from under Chan.

Rutting his hips into Changbin, Han pushes deeper until Changbin scrambling for purchase on slick satin sheets. Then, slowly, carefully, he pulls all the way out only to slam back in haphazardly.

The reaction is immediate and exactly what he wants. With a low, wanton moan, Changbin looks at him over his shoulder wide eyed with need, and _he_ did that.

And it feels so good that he wants it all over again without waiting. So he pulls out, slightly, pushes back in quickly. And, _fuck_. It’s like he’s learning how to fuck all over again.

Losing his goddamn mind trying to fuck Changbin doesn’t mean that he loses his words.

“Baby Changbin isn’t a virgin anymore huh?”

Changbin, too fucked out and desperate mewls something that sounds like a _“no”_ in response.

“God, he feels so good Chan.”

Chan on the other hand is eager to talk him through it. “The two of you look so good together.”

Finding a rhythm is difficult. Chasing the rush of the high that is Changbin’s body is easy as he pushes inside, over and over and over again.

“You’ve got that cute look on your face again Han. Like you’re gonna cum.” Chan’s tone is so confident.

“Fuck.”

“You gonna cum Han?”

“Ha-an,” Changbin’s voice is a deadly mixture of sultry-pouty, and it should be enough to get him off. Should, but isn’t. Cause his whole world right now is Changbin. His hot body pressed against Han’s hot body. His heat clamped around his dick.

“I need,” Han isn’t even certain if he says Chan’s name properly. All he knows is that Chan leans over Changbin, and kisses him roughly. Their teeth clink together, and then their tongues meet. Only then, and not a moment before does Han cum deep inside of Changbin.

* * *

 

Han helps him put on the condom in bulky hand over fist motions.

Quickly, to the point of being rough with greed, Chan pulls Changbin into his lap and guides him down onto his cock. Unlike before, where Han had to wait for Changbin to adjust to the fullness in the pressure, Changbin has to wait for Chan to adjust to the intoxicating pliability of his body.

Count each little divot in his spine.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Rest the tips of his fingers into the dimples of his back and squeeze. Cause Changbin’s body is a dangerous brand of cloying right now.  Fucked open and desperate to cum, he pulls Chan deep, deep inside with _just_ the right amount of liquid friction. Chan has to wait, contain his greed, to avoid cumming inside of Changbin right away.

“Chan,” Changbin breathes his name, and it’s never sounded so good.

“I told you he was big,” Han sits besides them, wilted yet content. A smile dragged lopsidedly across his face from one end to the other.

“You’re both,” Changbin trails his arms from around Chan’s neck down lower. Rough nylon catches against his skin. “A lot.”

Changbin smiles at him now, not just with his mouth, but his whole expression. His expression is something knowing. Something mutual. Something dangerous. Their sweat slicked foreheads slip slide against one another. Noses mash and bump and somewhere in the middle, a kiss is found between them. Changbin doesn’t close his eyes.

Neither does Chan.

Changbin tells him a terrifying secret with his deep, unwavering, and all knowing gaze.

But the glint in his eyes, impish and playful, tell Chan that he’ll deal with it as he sees fit.

Changbin rubs the pad of his finger across Chan’s left nipple in a slow circle until he can feel the soft skin form into a hard peak. Then, he repeats the action on the other side. His body, stays perfectly still, warm and hot around Chan.

Changbin laughs ahead of something he finds particularly clever. Hands rest on Chan’s sides and then slide up his ribs slowly one by one before cupping his chest. “He’s like one of your anime girls Han.”

“Heh-yeah.” Han, suddenly roused from his post orgasm stupor, kneels behind Chan now and paws at his chest.

“You guys are assholes.”  But it doesn’t stop Chan from canting his hips upwards at the same time as he grabs Changbin’s hips and grinds him downwards.

Everything is exactly the same, and yet everything feels completely different now. Different from when he and Changbin picked up Han and threw him around like a sack of potatoes. Different from when he held Changbin while Han fucked him. Wedged between them, he can’t use one to hide from the other. Like the feeling of Changbin’s cast against his bare skin, it leaves him feeling rubbed raw and vulnerable.  

With Chan in the middle, he can feel Han’s cock pressed against the small of his back grow from soft to half-hard as he watches Chan fuck Changbin. Watches Han reach around his middle so that he can curl his fingers curl around Changbin’s cock and jerk him off.

Mere moments ago, he kissed Changbin in reassurance that whenever Han slid in to fast or too deep. Little secrets uttered between them and sealed with a _smack._ Now, he gives Changbin sloppy, open mouthed kisses that are interrupted by Changbin, breathy with need, “please.”  

Exactly the same. Completely different.

“Ah fuck, Chan. _Please.”_

Their current position is difficult. Changbin’s completely fucked out and struggles to ride him properly. Chan, weighted down by Changbin in his lap, can’t thrust up into him like Changbin needs.

Awkwardly, Chan changes their position. Guides Changbin down onto the mattress onto his back. Times his thrusts just so that they’re in time with Han pumping his cock. In no time at all Changbin’s cumming across his stomach with a soft, vulnerable noise that contrasts so sharply with his gravely speaking voice.  

Eyelids heavy and dreamlike, hair sweat matted to his head and his entire body covered head to toe in sweat and cum, Changbin looks at peace. Like he and Han fucked out all the ire and left in place is Changbin. Just Changbin.

Chan doesn’t get a chance to revel in it. Changbin’s fucked out and oversensitive, and he can’t keep going.

But, no sooner than he’s pulled out of Changbin, Han’s on his cock like he’s been sucking cock for years.

Except—He hasn’t even had the chance to take the condom off yet. “Han, no stop.”

Changbin’s tone is warm and dreamy, “fucking dumbass.”

“Sorry!?”

“Oh my god, it’s fine.” Chan hurries to pull the old condom off.

Han takes too much of him into his mouth at once and gags. To counter Han, Chan fists the base of his cock and forces Han to focus on the tip. Kitten licks at the ridge and tip of his cock are soon replaced by hollowed cheeks and obscene slurping noises. It’s exactly what he needs to push him over the edge. Chan, in his greed, tugs at the base of his cock in tandem with Han’s mouth.  

“Chan,” Changbin’s voice is still soft and small, and its just one more thing that makes his skin burn red hot with vulnerability.

Han’s lashes are so long, and he opens his eyes so slowly that those long lashes shield Chan from his deep, inquisitive gaze, but only for a moment. When Chan does see, he isn’t ready. How could he be? Han’s expression is glassy with contentment, but simultaneously sharp with uncertainty. Each bat of his lashes, each swipe of his tongue, a silent, _please,_ begging for reassurance.

That’s all it takes. One glance, and the crumbling walls Chan keeps between them tumble down. He’s pulsing into Han’s mouth before he can even think to warn him.

Han stays between his knees, trapped in slow panic. Mouth open, Chan can see his tongue coated in thick white cum. Normally, that kind of thing would be dead sexy. Like, doesn’t matter if he just came, cause he’d be hard all over again. Except, with Han, his _fear_ is almost palpable. Uncertain whether to spit, or to swallow. A thin strand of white liquid spills out of the corner of his mouth and rolls down his chin with an agonizing slowness.

Chan seals his mouth over Han’s for lack of any other solution to the current problem. He tastes himself on Han’s mouth and chases himself on Han’s tongue.

“You guys are nasty,” but Changbin’s statement doesn’t stop him from accepting Han’s kiss, wet and sloppy. When they part, Changbin looks at him, petulant and expectant. So Chan, taste of himself still on his tongue, kisses Changbin too.

* * *

_July 19 th, 1998_

They lie together in a tangled, sticky mass of limbs. Chan’s arm is asleep because Han is laying on it, yet he can’t imagine moving. Changbin, soft and subdued, nuzzles into the crook of his neck. He’s sitting on a wet washrag that they used to clean up with, and that’s pretty uncomfortable too.

“Didn’t you say you mixed our stuff? That me and Han sent you?” He did. J.One versus SpearB produced and composed by CB77. Its sitting in his bag alongside a beat-up pair of converse and a clean t-shirt for tomorrow.

“Yeah, I have it with me.”

“There’s a stereo, can we listen?”

On the nightstand next to the bed, there’s a digital clock radio. Large, bright red letters carve out a distinct space in the dim mood lighting of the room. Tauntingly, almost indignantly, they read 2:17 AM.

“I don’t want to _move_ ,” Chan whines. If they stay here in this liminal space, naked, lights on, maybe time will stop and tomorrow won’t come. He’d deal with the feeling of pins and needles in his extremities all night if it meant that they could stay close to one another.   

Han leans over the edge of the bed and struggles to reach his bag. Tottering on the ledge, Chan grabs his ankles to keep him from falling off the mattress cliff and into the carpet abyss. Han hefts it onto his knees without so much as a thank you to Chan for saving his life.

“Please?”


	5. Beautiful Morning With You

_July 19 th, 1998_

Han melted into the sheets, but he springs to life when he hears his own voice over the stereo. “Ay yo, Chan this is dope. You did all this?” For a moment, his wide eyes and grin disappear and is replaced by the round full moon of Han’s ass as he leans over the bed for his bag.

Seconds later, he resurfaces with a pen and paper in hand.

Han’s interest is genuine, but that doesn’t stop the hot flush of embarrassment from rising to his face. Changbin and Han are amazing, and they deserve better than a third-generation tape made from piecemeal efforts in the teacher’s office. “Yeah, but I had a much better set up in Seoul.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Changbin pops back to life now too, leaning over Chan to look at Han’s childlike scribble.

“Makin’ music bay-bee,” Han responds.

Changbin’s face pulls into a taut frown, but his eyes shine with mischief. “Then give me some paper.” He reaches for Han’s tattered black and white composition book.

“Just a second,” Han flips through the pages before tearing out a couple of pages.

“This is inspiring you right,” and Changbin’s dry tone is funny because he sounds anything but what he asks of Chan. _Inspired_. Yet, pen meets paper immediately.  “Genius composer Bang Chan?”

“Absolutely.” It’s Chan’s turn to complete the circuit now. Moon the rest to reach for his bag and fish something out of it.

His arms feel heavy and his mind feels cloudy. After all, he’s been awake for _so long,_ but a craved feeling of unrest claws his way into his chest and tells him that the notes and the words may not fit together _now,_ but if he doesn’t lock them down soon they’ll be lost forever.

“How long have you been awake Han?”

“I slept a little on the plane. I left like, what?” Han cocks his head and stares at the digital clock. Maybe twenty-six hours ago?”

“You tired?”

“Nah.”

“I woke up at eight and left Hakone at nine,” Changbin beams.

“Yeah, but you need your rest, baby,” Chan responds. From his bag he extracts his secret weapon, the ace up his sleeve, that one thing that’s saved a million ideas or more from being lost forever. He bought this stylophone from music rental store for a whopping twelve dollars with his own birthday money just after he turned thirteen.

“Did you think of me when you woke up at six this morning?” Changbin asks.

Chan turns on the instrument, and an electric crackle responds. He rakes the stylus across the metal panel, creating an archipelago of sharp electronic notes. Then, he taps out the first few bars of a tune that’s been stuck in the back of his mind for days, but has only chosen to resurface now. “Of course,” and Chan means it.

“You’re telling me you had that with us, but not our tickets?” The Changbin that laid tangled in the sheets before them moments ago, docile and agreeable, fades away to the Changbin that they’re used to.

“I put it into my bag when we went back to the station.”

“Um? Weren’t you were playing with it when we were sitting down by the river?”

“No-o?” But his own voice betrays him, and adds too many syllables to the word. “Okay, what are you thinking?” He says this as if he doesn’t have two or three hooks floating around his mind, competing for his attention.

“I’m thinking about those moments where everything changes. Where you won’t ever be the same ever again after, and that’s okay. Saying goodbye to an old self. Saying hi to your new self,” Han’s voice is soft and earnest. 

Chan doesn’t want to ruin this moment, but “I can clearly see the phrase “Got me spread like a buffet, we’re going to eat this meal family style,” on your paper.”  

“Han’s deep, and if you don’t get it you don’t get it,” Changbin drags his pen across the page. “And when we make it big, there shouldn’t be any ambiguity. We banged.”

Chan laughs. “Yeah, what have you got for me?” Because that was the problem with the tapes they’d sent before. Chan had no idea how to best meld their styles together. Changbin was a rapidfire machine gun, and Han was like the cut of a samurai’s sword in the movies. Didn’t know you were hit until a silent second or two later when blood was spewing everywhere.

“Its not deep like Han’s. So far, a shitty half-rhyme.” Changbin flips over the page ignoring two or three paragraphs worth of verse, several of which are crossed out, before handing off the crumpled pages to Chan.  

“I can work with that.”

Han and Changbin work with such an infectious urgency, that notes simply fly from the stylophone’s edge and into the waiting ear of his tape recorder. Nothing perfect, only a chorus, and a verse no bridge, and choppy transitions. But Chan’s never worked so fast.

“Hey, this blanket smells like bubblegum.” Han’s voice sounds muffled through their impromptu recording studio consists of the white duvet on the bed pulled over Han’s head. His toes peak out from underneath the blanket.

“Ah, but the Fulula Love Hotel recording studio is famous. Our platinum album will be on the wall in no time,” Changbin responds.

 With something like a beat for Han to work with, it’s Chan’s turn to balance the notebook in his lap. Yes, they’re still naked. His bare thigh rests against Changbin’s. Pen meets paper, and the delicate scratching sound melds with the muffled sound of Han spitting fire underneath the blanket. As he writes, he’s acutely aware of the feeling of Changbin watching him.

Somehow, it feels far more intimate than anything they just did.

* * *

 

 Chan hasn’t woken up next to anyone in a while, and so he’s forgotten how to tune out all the minor little annoyances that pale in comparison to the joy of waking up to someone near and dear. Creak of the box spring, or the dip of the mattress, is all that it takes to pull him from his light sleep. Trapped in the middle, these issues are amplified twofold, and sleep is elusive.

“You even wash your dick off from last night?” Whether this is a dream, or this is true chaos that’s erupting in first morning light, Chan tries to ignore it for just a moment longer.

 But, Changbin laughs like his simplistic insult is the funniest thing in the world, and tugs Chan back into consciousness.

Then, the laughter is interrupted by a sharp gasp. Even though his mind is still fuzzy with sleep, he understands what’s happening around him.

The mattress shifts and then there’s the sticky sound of smacking lips.

Chan opens his eyes, and his vision is colored by the strange and translucent film that only grows over your eyes when you sleep somewhere away from home. That temporary panic is displaced by the humming sensation of lips pressed against his hip bone, and hot breath just below the navel.

“What if he freaks out and kicks us in the face?”

 “I would laugh.”

A wet warm mouth returns to the v of his hips, suckling at the skin until his cock twitches in response. He’s half hard and already at their absolute mercy.

Chan props himself up on his elbows, and is greeted with the sight of Changbin and Han laying further down the bed upon their stomachs on either side of him. They look at each other and they look at his cock with both fondness and uncertainty at how to proceed.

Chan shoots them both a drowsy, sidelong glance. “Hey.”

“Morning,” Changbin laps a long stripe up the side of his cock. “Han’s real glad you didn’t kick him in the face.”

“Changbin’s real happy that his porno wake up is working.” Han mirrors the action the other side of him, swiping his tongue across the ridge in curiosity.

“Ah—”  and that’s all it takes for Chan to go from half asleep and half turned on to powerfully, painfully hard.

Together, Changbin and Han kiss and mouth and lap at the sides of his cock, never quite allowing the other to take him in completely. The sensation is equal parts amazing and infuriating. “You guys—ah,” Chan interrupts himself at the flick of a tongue against his cock. Long stripes up from the base to the tip until their lips brush together, and sucking his cock devolves into long, exploratory tongue filled kisses.

Changbin and Han part with a sticky _smack_ and a long thin strand of silver saliva between them. A look shared between them lets Chan know that whatever it is they’ve wordlessly decided comes next is going to leave him absolutely ruined.

“Are so hot.”

Changbin grabs his cock firm around the base. Han takes Chan into his mouth now in earnest, wrapping his lips around the ridge of his glans.

Changbin noses against the curls at his crotch, and laps at swaths of skin haphazardly. “We might think the same thing of you,” Changbin murmurs against his skin. His fingers cup his sac and test the weight at the same time that Han bobs downward on his cock.

He’s had his cock sucked before, but never like this. Never any sheepish laughter worried into the crease of his thigh. Never the shock of warm wet lips smacking off his cock, at the whine of, “you said I could—” before the jolt of cold air can douse his damp skin.

Good doesn’t even begin to describe the way that they make him feel.

“I’m gonna actually swallow,” and Chan can feel the corner of Changbin’s mouth curl into a smirk around his cock before he meets his gaze, defiant.

He lets Han hold down his hips when he greedily rocks up into Changbin’s mouth. 

No matter the pressure, the tightness that builds in the base of his spine, or the intensity of Changbin’s gaze, he can’t, won’t look away.

Changbin’s expression softens, and he moans around his cock as if simply giving him this was enough.

That’s all that it takes. One glance and the world crumbles down around them. He’s pulsing into Changbin’s mouth, and Changnin rides him through each rolling wave of aftershock until he’s milked dry and left awestruck.

Changbin swallows, just as he promised.

* * *

 

“Baby,” Han coos in his ear. “Please.”

“No,” Changbin’s refusal isn’t exactly convincing. His cock twitches under Han and Chan’s touch. Arches his back into Han, grinding his ass against his cock. “I’m so sore.”

“But I got something that will make you feel all better,” and just like that Han’s got his mouth on his earlobe doing that thing that drives him absolutely crazy. Han could ask him to kill a man in cold blood right now and he’d probably do it.

“Ha-an,” Chan’s peeling Han away from Changbin and pushing him down toward the bed.

“I really, really want to return the favor,” and then Chan’s hands are on Changbin’s hips pulling him forward on the bed. Chan’s hair is messy. Exhaustion dusts his face, slight violet circles around his eyes offset by a half smile. “To both of you.”

* * *

If it weren’t enough to suck them both off, Chan pulls on his pants and a clean shirt and goes out across the street to the Family Mart for fried chicken and a whole mess of potato croquettes.

Changbin shuffles across the carpeted floor from the bathroom to the bed, still naked as the day he was born save for a pair of slightly too small women’s yellow foam house slippers. A quick survey of the room confirms what he already suspected from the confines of the bed. It’s fucking disgusting.

Grease stained wrappers litter the floor from the overflowing bin alongside condom wrappers. It smells like cotton candy lube, and cheap takeout, and sweat.

There’s a lube stain on the duvet.

Foul as it may be, the bed is an absolute oasis. Shucking his slippers, he crawls back into bed, this time sandwiching Han in the middle. Apt, because he’s got him _and_ Chan wrapped around his goddamn finger.

His eyelids feel heavy. It’s barely ten in the morning, and another hour of sleep can’t hurt.

When Changbin wakes again, the sun is much lower in the sky. Instead of the blinding white light that reflected off of high-rise windows, the color of the city outside is much softer. Not yet sunset, but the golden prelude to sunset. So, it should be no surprise when he rolls over to see that it’s after six in the evening. “ _Fuck.”_

“What’samater?” Chan’s voice is soft and confused.

Han gasps back to life, quickly rolling out of bed. “I’m up. I’m up, I’m up. I’m not gonna be late for school!”

“It’s late.”

* * *

 

_July 19 th, 1998_

When bars and the love hotels, the shops and the food stalls fade away, but before the sleepy, ancient little stacked roof tops of single-family homes curve upward, exponentially into modern high rise buildings, a long narrow park connects the two parts of the river with a bicycle and foot path, and scant patches of green grass.

Children, far too settled into their summer vacation, dangle fishing line off the bridge crossing the river. Nestled between this bridge and the foot path is a steep swath of grass upon which the three of them lie tangled together. Chan’s head rests upon Han’s chest, and he lies perpendicular Han. Han lies on his back with his head in Changbin’s lap. 

Despite the ample and ambient sounds of the river: birds chirping, tourist boats chugging past, and the crisp ring of bicycle bells, it’s silent here. Silent between them.

“Han,” Chan shifts slightly against him so that his ear rests upon his chest instead of the crown of his head. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said to me the other night.” At least he’s not the only one. At least with them he’s never alone. If one isn’t, the other is, and he can gravitate toward whichever he needs.

It’s nice.

He’d like to tell them this. Tell Chan that, for now, it’s him that he’s gravitated toward and he feels grateful. Because as much as he’d hate to admit it, he’s thinking of her.

He cards Chan's hair softly, dragging the tips of his fingers through thick hair until they become stuck in the curl and he has no choice other than to sink his fingers back in deep and scratch at the scalp.

“I can hear your heart beating.” Chan’s voice sounds like a smile. “It’s beating so fast. Mine probably is too.” Chan speaks so plainly now. “You were right. I was looking for someone. We had an argument a week or so before. Contract renewals come early, that way they know how many teachers to accept from university programs. But like, they want people to stay. It’s good for the kids, and the community.” 

“You wanna stay,” Changbin notes.

“For a little longer,” Chan responds.

“He didn’t want you to,” Changbin continues.  

A long silence passes. Long enough for the sky to grow a deeper shade of periwinkle-purple. Long enough for the itching sensation to return to his palms and his throat that makes it feel like he _has_ to say something. Like an itch that demands to be scratched. “I have an issue with the term.”

“Huh?” Changbin cocks a brow at him. Chan sits upward to look at him for clarification.

“Cheating,” he says the word now for the very first time. Rania may not be the best person, or even a _good_ person if he thinks about it. But that doesn’t mean he can’t want to be a _better_ person than he is right now. Someday. Maybe starting today.  “On one hand, it means, to break the rules. Which sure. That happened. We did that. I did that a lot.”

As if he can _sense_ his discomfort at the thousand or more thoughts that bubble underneath his skin, Changbin leans down, blocks out the sun, and kisses him on the mouth.

When they part with a smack wet and satisfying, he continues as if he’d never been interrupted. “If it’s cards or something. People cheat to get ahead. Did we really do what we did to get _ahead?”_

“Get over,” Changbin supplies. “Deceive someone else.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Jisung responds, “with the intent of winning. First of all how do you win at any of this? What’s winning? Stringing two people along? Indefinitely putting your energy into maintaining a lie? Something bad happens and it gets buried? None of those things feel like winning. Winning feels good.”

“Do you feel good right now Han?” Changbin sounds like he wants him to say yes.

He does.  

“Can I borrow some money?” If he waits til tomorrow, when Changbin’s on a train to Kyoto, he won’t have the strength. “Enough for an international call.”

Neither Changbin or Chan say anything. Chan sits up. Changbin reaches for his wallet in his pocket. Together, they string together more than enough. The assumption of course, is that when he walks over to the pay phone in the corner, he says all of the right things.

* * *

_June 4 th, 1998 _

_CB77:_ It’s a lot to think about

_JOne:_ You jsust got there.

_CB77:_ I like it well enough. Everyone is really nice, and I like my students. I did after school lessons for awhile in Seoul for extra money. It’s okay, but its mostly middle school and high school kids that are already convinced they won’t place well here and will need to go abroad.

_Changbin:_ So mediocre rich kids.

_CB77:_ Yeah.

_CB77:_ I don’t know, I was in Seoul for almost 4 years. That’s a long time for me lol

_JOne:_ I get it though. It’s different here. Really different. But I like it. Back home it seems like everyone is the same. But here, everyone is different. Everyone wants something different, and they believe something different.

_Changbin:_ You’re wrong.

_Changbin:_ My cousin lives in LA. In America. All the time she tells me she should see about my aunt and uncle getting me a visa. She talks about how many gay bars there are. How she sees guys just holding hands all the time. She says that it would be easier for me. Nicer for me.

_Changbin:_ What the hell even is easy.

_Changbin:_ The skate park I told you guys about. They just opened it. So I don’t have to go down by the river levy anymore and risk getting yelled at. Everyone said that was the first skate park in Korea. I get to skate at the first skate park in Korea. Chan, there’s more than one gay bar now. There’s like three, and there’s a lesbian bar too. Woojin loves fucking going there, which sucks because it helps me zero percent.

_CB77:_ More than Pink Hole?

_Changbin:_ Yes. More. _Mong. The Nine._ Anyway, I want to be here. You’re right. Nothing good used to ever happen here. Fuck, still probably doesn’t. But I just feel like soon, everything is going to happen here. And yeah, standing in a shitty lesbian bar with black light Georgia O’Keefe bullshit on a Friday night sucks, but it sucks so much less than _not_ having that at all. And it sucks _so so much_ less than just running away somewhere because it’s supposed to be easier.  

_JOne:_ Our Binnie is talkative tonight.

_CB77:_ When I told my mom I was going back she wasn’t exactly…She wasn’t _unhappy._ Apprehensive. 

_Changbin:_ I get that. My mom was the same way when my dad took me to a metal concert. She’s still that way…about almost everything. But I stopped being mad at it and figured it must be for a reason.

_JOne:_ I think about it like this. My parents left for a reason. They came back for a reason. It’s the same for anyone right? There needs to be a reason. To stay, to thrive. When I have a reason, I’ll go home. It’s that simple.

* * *

_July 19 th, 1998_

Five hundred yen in big silver 100 coins isn’t enough. Isn’t near enough. He slaps Changbin and Chan on the knees to come with him.

So, they do. Changbin swats the grass off of Chan’s back, and then he does the same for Changbin. Together, they swat at Han’s ass, claiming that there’s dried grass there. If that’s the case, he doesn’t really care.

Han’s hand shakes as he pumps the big silver coins into the narrow payphone coin slot. His hands shake when he starts to dial. A woman’s flat, automated voice speaks over the line when his fingers meet heavy metal keys. “Chan!?” and he thrusts the receiver into his hand.

“Ah, you need to dial one first.” Chan hangs up the receiver, and coins spill out of the return slot.

Han starts over again.

This time, no automated voice speaks over the line. Instead, there’s a crackle and a pop. Then, a ring. What if he gets the machine?

Wouldn’t it be _easier_ if he got the machine?

* * *

_July 19 th, 1998 _

Why the hell is _his_ heart pounding in his chest? Why is _his_ palm sweaty when his fingers are laced with Changbin’s? It’s not his phone call, but it _feels_ like his phone call. A payphone in Osaka. A payphone on the island, because if he cried, and if he raised his voice, he didn’t want Mrs. Yamamoto to hear.

Maybe _hopes_ that it goes better than his phone call. Whatever, _better_ means in this situation.  

Han’s fingers curl around the rigid metal payphone cord. “Hey,” his eyes are blown wide, and he looks to him and Changbin for reassurance.

Instantaneously, Chan can feel the burn of _Changbin’s_ gaze. In that expression, Changbin begs Chan for help, but this is something that Chan doesn’t have an answer for.

That’s just it right? They don’t have the answers. Han has to do this.

“Yeah, yeah the concert was good. Really really good.” Han runs his free hand through his hair and scratches the scalp near the base of his neck. “Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, orange looks good on you. Matches your skin tone. Hey uh—yeah I think you should cancel my ticket for tomorrow. See if you can get some money back?”

This time, he and Changbin both nod at him.

“Yeah, I’m um…I’m gonna stay with my friend in Japan for a few days.” Han’s expression is wide eyed an frantic.

Chan mouths to him, “Yeah sure!?” 

“Then I’m like…I’m gonna go home...Yeah. My friend is gonna lend me the money for the ferry or whatever.” Another pained expression.

Changbin grabs Han’s hand, the one that isn’t holding the receiver.

“Oh, yeah I guess I will miss your birthday. Yeah,” Han’s expression goes flat. Then, his jaw tightens. “Yeah that is kind of a bummer. You should just ask Awang. Yeah. Yeah. He likes you.”

Changbin, cartoonishly kneels while holding Han’s hand, as if he were proposing. Chan isn’t much better. His index finger has curled around Han’s beltloop, as if that small attachment were enough to keep him anchored.

“If you could just send me,” Han rolls his eyes. Chan can tell that in that expression he’s thinking about all the clothes, and CDs, and the half dozen keyboards he’s drenched in orange sodas. “My notebooks and my tapes.”

Han covers the receiver with the palm of his hand. “I’m not going to get any of it back,” but his tone is detached and nonchalant. “Yeah. You too. Happy birthday.”

The phone hits the cradle with a _clink._

Chan can _feel_ Han tremble, but his voice is steady. “Can I borrow a little more money?”

Changbin and Chan find more coins in the depths of their pockets. Han’s fingers shake when he tries to grab them from their hands, drops the coins across the concrete.

“You still wanna do this?” Changbin asks

Han nods.

So Changbin and Chan put the coins into the slot for him.

 “What number?” Chan asks, and then dials it for him.

“Hey mom--” and Han just looks at him with wide, glassy eyes. Han just looks at him, but no tears are shed. That’s how strong Han is. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m in Japan. Yeah, everything is fine. I was wondering if I could come home? Yeah, uh, my friends Changbin and Chan convinced me. Yeah. Yeah. They’re really good.”

* * *

 

“The next one will come soon right?” Han looks down the tracks, empty now, but they can hear the red line rumbling closer.

“Seven minutes,” Chan responds.

Seven minutes. Carry the three. That’s like, four-hundred seconds. Except, they _just_ did this with the last train he was supposed to catch. Even though they stand clustered together in their constant, comfortable triangle, Changbin knows that it’s different. Han and Chan stand together, closer to the clockwise line. Changbin, toward the counterclockwise line.

Han gets to stay. Even if it’s just for a little bit longer. Han gets to stay.

Chan gets to be alone with him. Even if the possibility of an infinite number of nights together going to clubs and stumbling back to his apartment in Seoul lie in front of he and Han, Chan for certain, gets to be alone with him, now.

 “If you want, when you get back,” _when,_ because he truly believes that Han meant what he said over the phone. When, because he gave him a few thousand yen for a ferry ticket, and if Han runs off without coming home he’ll just come and take his money back himself.

Changbin looks down at his feet, which stand upon big yellow letters painted onto the ground that he cannot read. His throat feels dry, his head faint.  “I don’t drive or anything, but I can come meet you at the station in Seoul. If you want.”  Seeing each other in person one time felt like moving heaven and earth. It’s hard, because to meet Han in Seoul is to reconcile two or three disparate parts of himself. It’s hard, because it really feels like the Han and Chan that he met yesterday are gone today, just like the Changbin that he brought to Osaka washed away in the rain. There’s no guarantee that the three of them, brand new, would like one another today, let alone want to be close tomorrow.

Han and Chan’s train thunders into the station and disappears with an angry honk.

“You’d do that?” The tips of Han’s fingertips, clammy and wet press into the palm of his hand tentatively.

Before, it was a game. How much could they get away with in public. Sneak a kiss, rub against a cock between four layers of clothing. Now? Now it’s like big, poorly kept secret. “We had sex with each other. The three of us, men. It was super awesome.” Any lingering gaze or slight touch will flicker on that big, floating neon light above their heads.

“Yeah,” Changbin pulls him into a hug. Hopes that the sound of his voice cracking is obscured when he speaks into Han’s shoulder.  “Just let me know when you’re coming home. I mean it.”

The station scolds them with a sharp _beep_ , signifying that now, Changbin’s train approaches. He looks to Chan now. He’d rather just say nothing. Rather just kiss him, and tell him everything without so much as a word between them.

Chan meets his gaze, and in some ways, Changbin gets his wish. Volumes are spoken, and everything is understood.

His own train thunders into the station, and it has to be now, or Changbin will never leave. Wind whips up through the platform, blowing back his hair back and cooling his sweat damp skin. For a moment, the sound of the train blocks out everything, even the sound of his own racing mind.

Chan pulls him in close for one last hug.

Changbin manages something like, “thank you,” and, “so much,” before he has to dash to the train.

The doors close, pull out of the station, and just like that they’re gone. The only proof that any of this was real at all was a ticket stub in his pocket and a few bruises underneath his shirt.

He doesn’t even realize anything is wrong until a little old woman nudges him in the arm and hands him a packet of tissues.

* * *

 

_July 19 th, 1998_

Chan ushers them onto the opposite train, and they ride for a few stops. Neither of them have said anything since Changbin ducked into the train. For a moment, Han’s just the guy eating chips over his girlfriend’s keyboard again crushing on this _really cool_ guy that he can’t even talk to.

Never mind the fact that he’s had Chan’s dick in his mouth.

It’s only after they surface from the redline that Chan speaks again. Touches him tentatively on his hip and asks him cheekily, “So, you’re staying with your friend in Japan for a few days?” Chan asks him with an impish smile. “Where’s he live? I can help you take the Ferry.”

So like, he’s actually gonna do it. They’re actually gonna do it.

“That’d be so nice man. Some really tiny island with a lot of old people, and like hot truck drivers apparently.”

“That sounds like a really nice place to go.” Chan trades more money for two ferry tickets, and _fuck,_ he’s running up quite a tab.

Then, he links his elbow into Han’s. Skirts the edge of what’s _okay_ on the other side of closed doors, but feels lighthearted enough that he can _almost_ believe that nobody knows, and nobody can tell. Together, they walk through the toll gate, onto the dock, and up a long metal ramp. Their feet echo off of diamond plated metal. “I’m going to a place a lot like that. The sunflowers are in bloom now, and everyone lives on the beach. You’d like it.”

Together, they walk to the front of the ferry and sit at the seats upon the bow, looking outward into the bay.

Chan’s body feels absolutely stifling next to his own, but they sit pressed together nonetheless.

“I’m so glad you’re coming,” Chan admits. His voice puffs steamy hot against Han’s already warm skin.

Then, it grows quiet between them once more. This time, it feels more comfortable, like they’re allowed to be quiet and maybe just a little bit pensive, even without Changbin there to usher in or make comfortable the mood.

The moon rises slowly, and the ferry crawls toward it at a glacial pace.

Sea spray tickles his nose and reminds him that this is all too real. He’s doing it.

That realization makes him enjoy the silence less. A thousand or more questions bubble in Han’s throat, and the least important of which rise to the very top. “Can I see where you work? Can we grill mackerel? I’ve always wanted to do that myself. Can we—”

Chan doesn’t respond right away, and when he does it’s with a soft little wheeze-snore sound. His head lolls against Han’s shoulder. Although they haven’t known one another long, it feels so privileged. Chan went to bed after they did, and woke several times through the night. But he’s just here, passed the fuck out on Han’s shoulder.

Han steals a furtive glance around him, and although as self-conscious as he feels, no one’s watching. So, he plants a kiss upon the crown of Chan’s head, and lets him rest, no matter how much the silence makes his ears burn.

* * *

 

_July 20th, 1998_

Changbin stands at the wooden plaque stand with a sharpie marker in hand. His parents and his sister’s wishes are already tied to the nearby pegboard. Among row after row of plaques written in Japanese, and a handful in English, the Hangul stand out. His sister’s is to do well during her first year during university. His mothers’ is to travel abroad to another place, soon. His fathers’ requests that he finds his  car keys soon. It may seem relatively shallow in comparison, but Changbin knows his father and he knows that it really isn’t.

“Binnie, hurry up,” his sister urges. “I wanna go to the fountain.”

Changbin stares down at the rough wood and writes quickly without thinking. “I’m so grateful that mom and dad took us here—” No that isn’t right. Like it’s true, but as selfish as it is he’s grateful for _them._ Meeting them, being made better by them. Changbin shuts down the thought in his mind before he can finish it on cheap wooden plaque. The three of them, their luck is already stretched so thin.  He crosses out what he’d written previously, and writes in tiny letters that fill the rest of the space, “I want to see them again.”

That isn’t exactly right either. He wants them together. So he flips over the plaque and writes , “I want to be with both of them,” but that seems like such an over simplification.

He fishes a clunky 500 yen coin from his pocket, clunks it down onto the table and grabs another wooden plaque. Angrily, he starts again.

 What he feels right now is far too complex for a piece of wood no bigger than his palm. Feelings of love, feelings of adoration, feelings of fear, and uncertainty all rattle around in his brain in one big incoherent emotion that pulls him in every imaginable direction.

What he writes upon this plaque is laughably simple in comparison to what it is that he feels right now. “Chan & Han.”

Hastily he tacks it onto one peg among many already filled with dozens and dozens of prayers. Impossible to tell which ones are more important than his own, impossible to tell which are absolutely banal. Impossible to tell which ones will be answered.

Changbin moves briskly. He grabs his sister’s hand with his clast clad hand, and moves her into the long line of clueless tourists.

“Changbin, are you alright?”

“Never better.”

In the middle of the shrine is a giant waterfall. In that waterfall, is the traditional cleansing ritual. As they move through the line, crisp cool mist wafts across Changbin and his sister. The line weaves back _behind_ the waterfall. So, for a moment, Changbin’s everything becomes the taste and the smell of cold spring water. His sister hands him a long metal pole. Upon the end is a cup.

His mother read about aloud from one of her guide books. At that time, he may have rolled his eyes, but right now he’s so grateful that he knows exactly what to do. He fills the cup with water from the water fall. First he washes his left hand, then his right. The water is so cold that it hurts his teeth when it hits his mouth. The rest of the water is hastily spilled down the length of the dipper down his wrist and into his mottled cast.

The people around them wipe their hands with small terrycloth towels, just like the kind that Chan has. Just like the kind that he has in his back pocket. But it seems so unimportant now.

Changbin clasps his hands together as he approaches the shrine. Wet hands make an ugly smacking sound. His palm sticks to the wet plaster.

His prayer isn’t so much of a prayer as it is a plea, desperate an urgent because he feels so lost right now. _“I’m in love with Chan and Han, and I don’t know what to do.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One or two more, extended epilogue style. Come see me on twitter @missbluniverse


	6. Patricia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hew boy this one got LONG. Anyway there will be at least one more, probably two more chapters because I longfic'd.

_July 21 st, 1998_

_CB77:_ Changbin. I know that you’re still on vacation, so it will be a few days before you see this.

_CB77:_ I’m so afraid.

* * *

 

_July 20 th, 1998_

Chan returns to his room to find it almost identical to the way that he left it. The only exception is that the sun has risen higher making the room grow stifling warm, and the protesting celling fan cannot keep up with the heat. Han’s kicked off the comforter and it reveals a warm sun kissed body.  All of Han’s clothes are slightly askew, hem of his shirt, actually Chan’s, is rucked high revealing the small of his back. Laying on his stomach, leg hiked high, his shorts ride up.

Chan’s already drenched in sweat from his morning run, but he can’t help waking him up the way that he does. Crawling back in bed beside Han, Chan slides his hand up Han’s thigh, cups his ass and squeezes softly. “Han,” with his mouth pressed against the lobe of his ear. “C’mon babe.”

Han shifts beside him, muttering something unintelligible, and then rolls over to face Chan.

“Es’so early Chan.”

He smells like sweat right now, but it doesn’t stop Han from burying his face into the seam of his armpit and inhaling deeply.

“It’s already seven thirty. I went out for a run.”

“Early,” and this is followed by a strange snorting sound. Han emerges from his armpit and looks at him with squinted, sleepy eyes. “You gonna give me breakfast in bed or something?” This is accompanied by Han rocking against his hip.

He’s hard, but that’s nothing new. Han doesn’t seem to have an off period.

“I’ll show you something really cool if you get out of bed.”

* * *

 

“Ah, Chan?” Alright Han didn’t live in Kuala Lumpur for five years so he could be a little bitch about the heat, but uh...He’s always made it a point to stay out of it as much as possible. When school was out, he was more or less nocturnal, sleeping all day and waking up around four or five in the evening. Now, Chan drags him out into the rising sun. “How much further do you think it is?”

Chan’s approach seems a little bit different. First a run, now a literal walk across the island, and Chan definitely wants to kill him.

“Like two? Two and a half kilometers?”

“Oh my go-d.”

“You really need a bicycle around here. It’s the best way to get around. Everything’s just barely too far away to walk.” Chan’s pushing his own bike as they walk, a giant blue antique bike. The wheels clickand chain click as they walk down the road that fades from pavement to gravel to dirt and back again at a moment’s notice.

“I haven’t ridden a bicycle in _years.”_

“I hear you really don’t forget you know?”

Even though his feet hurt from walking on the uneven road, it’s really, really nice. Chan doesn’t ask him about what he’s going to do in a few week’s time when he goes back home. Chan doesn’t ask him if he misses her, if he misses his keyboard, or if he’s going to miss street market pancakes. But if he brings it up, Chan listens. He stops pushing his bike, makes Jisung stop walking, and holds his gaze intently.

And, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, Chan will occasionally interrupt a silence that could be comfortable if only he could let it.  

Only after they debate whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich, and if a pop-tart is a dumpling, trade stories about their scars, and go back and forth about whether or not either of them should get more ear piercings, Chan stops in front of an ancient looking house with moss growing on top of the shingles.

 He lets them into the back garden through a rusted gate. From a dilapidated storage shanty, he extracts a slightly rusted, lemon yellow, girls’ three speed. The original handlebar grips are replaced with faded rubber replacements, the ends molded into tiger’s heads. From the mouths, are pink and orange streamers.

He also extracts two brooms from the shed. “But uh, renting the bike isn’t free. We have to sweep the walkways.”

As if on cue, a voice calls out to them. From the back door of the house, Han can see a little old woman standing behind the screen. “ _Morning Chan!”_

* * *

 

Han may be the only person on Earth who has actually _forgotten_ how to ride a bicycle. He totters down the broken road for seconds at a time before throwing his feet downward to grind the bike to a halt, or dives off of it and onto the grass along the side of the road.

Chan pops the kickstand on his own bike, and dads Han through it. Puts one hand on the handlebars alongside Han’s and grabs onto the back of the seat, guiding him along. “You’re just doing this so I’ll grab your ass.”

“Am not!”

Han peddles for awhile on his own, and Chan sends him off with a push. Then, he races backwards to grab his own bike, peddles quickly, and catches up to Han.

Han may be the only person on Earth who forgot how to ride a bicycle, but, much like everything else that he does, he picks it up with an alacrity that would be envious if it weren’t infectious.

“This is like, deep isn’t it?” Han glances over his shoulder to look at Chan and wobbles on the bike in the process.

“What, my b-“ Chan stops himself. “Friend relearning how to ride a bike after like three or four huge life changes on a quaint rural road? I don’t think so.” If he’s being honest with himself, which, he’s really trying hard to do these days. Han makes him want to be honest. Changbin makes him want to be honest. Chan can see the way that he wears his personality, just a little bit too long in the sleeves so that his hands are covered and droop off of his shoulders. It would be so cool Chan could help him grow into it.

But, he cannot use Han to iron out the wrinkles in his own self.

 “I am going to write _so_ much when we get back. Cause it _is_ deep Chan.”

A ride that would take Chan half an hour alone takes almost triple that. In addition to Han occasionally losing his balance, they stop for premade rice balls because Han hasn’t had breakfast. Then, they have to stop and rest because eating and then biking makes Han’s stomach cramp.

By the time they make it back to the big empty house, they’ve lost their shirts in the late morning sun. Their desire to touch each other justifies the fact that they absentmindedly drop their bikes by the door.

“You said you were gonna show me something.” Han crowds him while he’s trying to untie his shoelaces. Breathes hot into his ear, and makes sure to make contact bare skin to bare skin. Exhaustion gone, Han’s mischievous energy is replenished.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be pretty cool.” Lips brush against lips, but Han’s surprisingly timid.

“Landlady’s not home. It’s mahjong day, so…” Han’s been on thin ice from moment one, just by being an unexpected houseguest. The fact that he ate more than half of the cheesecake Mrs. Yamamoto asked Chan to bring home almost got him killed.

“We can do whatever we want.” Chan’s not the kind to feel nervous, but he hasn’t done this since…Chan bites his lower lip nervously. Then, he reaches around Han, smacks his ass hard and calls, “race you to the shower.”

* * *

 

An ache is something deep inside. It lingers, and it persists. Han aches right now. Every muscle in his body, joined forces to protest against what he’d done this morning. Chan, like a salve for his ache applies himself to Han underneath warm water, and soothes him.

He can’t help but wonder if Chan aches too. Not just his shoulders, or his calves, but that empty, voracious feeling. Something like hunger, but upward and slightly to the left in his heart. A greed that makes him want more of him, even though he’s right here.

All of this, of course, he thinks about he’s got his fist wrapped around both of their cocks underneath steaming hot water.

Some people do math, or think of something gross like month old spoiled milk. Han just thinks of the sappiest stuff possible when he’s trying not to pop. He’s gotta last as long as possible. Cause Chan’s always so in control, while he feels like he could pop a stiffy if Chan just smiled at him a certain way. Now Chan’s pawing at him like he’s desperate. Now Chan’s got him pressed up against the mint green tile of the shower wall, and he’s going to enjoy every single moment that Chan faulters beneath him.

Sloppy-sexy, his hand slides over their cocks, slick with soap. Bubbles foam and pop around his tight clenched fist and the heads of their cocks. Up the shaft and _twist_ of his wrist. Just like he’s learned to do for himself, albeit a bit more clumsier now that another cock in his hand.

“God, that feels so good, _Han,”_ and the way he says his fucking name. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “Hey,” and then Chan’s kissing him, all soft and warm. Mismatched lips, Chan’s lower pressed against his upper, means that Chan laps at the roof of his mouth and both of them moan into the kiss. “Do you wanna? Do me?”

_FUCK._ His brain is bluescreening right now. “Hell yeah.”

“Cool.” As if he were a magician, and in some ways, Chan is in fact a sex magician, Chan procures a bottle of lube from behind a cluster of bottles of bodywash, shampoo, and conditioner.

Chan stands against the far shower wall so that the spray only laps at his ankles, back arched. Slowly, Chan works a single digit inside.

“Oh wow.” That’s it. Nothing else comes to mind, nothing else spills out of his mouth. Dumbfounded, he spreads Chan’s ass open and stares as he clenches around his finger. Dumbfounded, he rubs his dick against the crest of Chan’s thigh. “Wow.”

“Ah, stop it, you’re embarrassing me,” breathy, in a way that he didn’t know Chan could be. 

“You’re just super hot.” Like, his dick is _throbbing._ Harlequin romance style.

“Yeah, so are you.” Chan’s voice is evened out now. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah,” he breathes.

Here’s the thing. He really, _really_ wants to fuck Chan. Really. But when he sinks his finger inside, he’s so tight that even that feels like too much. Will he even fit inside?

“I can do another one.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Chan looks back at him with a lopsided grin. His hair is wet and matted to the side of his face. Blush dusted across his face, he’s about to tell Han some grand secret.  “Just go slow. It’s been awhile.”

So Han does as he’s told. Sinks his second finger in slowly. Does his very best to try to remember what he saw Chan do to Changbin. Rotates his wrist and moves his fingers.

“Not just in and out, like—”

So he curls his fingers and Chan makes a low and satisfied sound.  

Oh. Must be doing something right.

Sappy as hell, but with his free hand, he grabs Chan’s hand and holds onto it against the tile wall. Crooks his fingers once, twice, over and over until Chan’s body becomes little less resistant. Never pliable. Over and over until the steaming hot water grows tepid, and then cool.

“M’ready now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You should sit on the floor.”

“I should?”

“Of course. You’re sore right? You should let me take care of you.”

Han does as he’s told. Sinks down onto the floor, and lets the lukewarm water fall onto his legs.

Chan sinks to his knees and straddles him. Then, he pulls Han close, with his hand cupping the back of his neck and his face buried in Chan’s chest.

Chan sinks down slowly, and even though _he’s_ the one that’s giving so much right now, even though _he’s_ the one whose probably at least a little bit in pain, it’s Chan that pays attention to his body. It’s Chan that waits for him to adjust to the impossible tightness.

Chan forces him to look up at him by tilting his chin upward. His thumb brushes against his lower lip. “You good?”

How can there even be a question when Chan’s so good to him?

He must give Chan some kind of response, because Chan’s rocking his hips in slow, hypnotic circles. Then, Chan raises himself up himself up on Jisung’s cock and lowers himself down, each time with a longer stroke and moan that’s louder and more unhinged than the last.

At some point, it stops being about how fucking good Chan feels around him anymore. It’s becomes the rosy glow that Chan brings to his cheeks. Its about the way that he makes him feel like he can do anything. When he tries to articulate this, it comes out in a mangled string of “ _thank-you, like-you, good to me-you,”_ in time with his own pitiful thrusts upward into Chan. The feeling linkers, even after he’s cum deep inside of Chan.

Fuck.

* * *

 

_July 28 th, 1998_

The carpet in the video rental store looks like one of the blacklight posters his friend Zikri had. Black with a cloud like tessellation in purple, red, and orange across the center of each square. This pattern repeated over and over again like illusory waves.

Maybe Chan will buy them popcorn. The kind at the counter that comes in a little foil pan you can cook yourself over the stove. He’s always wanted to try that kind, but when he was a kid his mom never bought it, and it hasn’t been relevant since. Ooh, _that_ looks good whatever it is. The film has both a shirtless man and a woman in a golden bikini on the cover, but he feels like he should let Chan choose uninterrupted in repentance for the monstrosity he selected last night.

Chan chooses the movie next to the one that caught his eye. This one has someone in a bad monster costume on the front, and girl in a gold bikini. “What about this one?”

“Yeah sure.”

He lets Chan pay for the rental, and he goes outside to the vending machine. Dutifully, he gets Chan a peach water, because he’d rather not drink soda. For himself, an orange soda, and stores both in the side pocket of his shorts. Then, he picks up his bicycle, discarded in wet gravel right next to Chan’s.

Han looks out across the parking lot, and down the road. In the indigo light of, _just_ past twilight, but just before complete darkness, fireflies act in proxy for the stars and the moon who have yet to rise. Those fireflies charge the island with mischievous electric. Everything, from the ocean who heaves just near the road, to the long overgrown grass in the fields that rustles in the wind, and the cats that stare out at him from green-gray glowing eyes, and every person, himself, Chan, the clerk inside, are illuminated by that electric.

It isn’t so hot tonight. The sky grew black and crackled with lightening, charging the earth. Then, it rained, and it rained through sunset and into the night, cooling the baked asphalt and using up the thickness in the air.

Chan joins him, rights his bicycle, and stands astride it, mirroring Han’s position. The air crackles with electric.

Chan wants to say something.

“I was wondering if…You don’t have to decide now or anything but. I was thinking about...I’d really like to try it the other way around with you.”

It takes every ounce of his energy to not spit take orange soda onto his handlebars and onto the pavement.

“Don’t feel pressured. Just, I like it. You know Changbin really likes it. And…if you want to try it, I think it would be cool if you did it with me.” Chan gives him space. Mounts his bicycle and pushes off into the parking lot.

Han follows. Peddles so fast that the wind and the wheels fill up the uncertainty in his brain and speak for him. Why is this scary? He’s like, super into Chan. “I’ll think about it.”

_August 1 st, 1998_

“Don’t you think this is a little morbid?” Han, flipped open stapler in hand, punches sharp metal into soft cork, attaching the golden yellow boarder to the bulletin board.

“Um,” Chan’s got a magic marker in hand. With furrowed brow, he writes the names of each student in first grade onto a plain white paper circle. When finished, he takes another flipped open stapler, and attaches it to the board. “I don’t think so?”

The row of plain white circles connects a large yellow paper pac-man to a red, blue, pink and green ghost. He still needs to make a yellow one, but he ran out of yellow paper making Pac-Man. Yet to be tacked up are rainbow letters that say, “achomplish your goals.” Elementary humor is an art.

“You want the kids to _achomplish-“_ Han’s standing on a chair to reach the top edge of the board. He looks down at Chan with big, insistent eyes. “Their goals. Right?”

“Yeah? Oh—” Distracted, he’s badly mangled the first character in Kumiko’s name. So, he reaches for another circle.

“It _looks_ like…It _conveys_ the idea that the Pac-Man’s goal is to eat the children. Just, obliterating them.”

Chan takes a step backward to look at the board. “Oh. Oh no.”

* * *

 

_August 3 rd, 1998_

It could be easy with their arrangement, that two of them would become swept up in one another, and push the other one away. Somehow, when Han is here with him, he and Changbin become closer.

When Changbin finally responds to his message, Chan is sitting in the communal teachers’ office printing out worksheets so that he can feed them all into the copier. Not only stuff for his classes, but for the math teacher, and literature teacher. They really, really like the fact that he’s “good with computers.”

The office window looks out onto the school yard. School may be out for the summer break, but the yard is the best place for children to play. Through the open windows he can hear laughter, and calls of “hey batta-batta,” the crack of bat against ball.

Then, up and over all of the chaos, laughter, sharp, staccato, and undeniably Han.

He stands on the mound, no glove. From what Chan can tell when he looks up and out the window, Han pitches for both teams. No one out on the field is older than nine. Stuck between that awkward age of can’t throw, but too “old” to use a tee.

Han smiles at each and every kid, encourages each and every one.  Han looks, so happy. Chan feels so privileged that he gets to see Han like this.

_CB77:_ Changbin. I know that you’re still on vacation, so it will be a few days before you see this.

_CB77:_ I’m so afraid.

_Changbin:_ I am too

_Changbin:_ probably not what you need to hear right now huh?

_Changbin:_ But I keep crying like a little bitch at a moment’s notice. Anything that even comes close to reminding me of you both.  

_CB77:_ No, it’s exactly what I need to hear. Its nice to know I’m not alone.

_Changbin:_ Han’s afraid too. So, you’re absolutely not alone.

_CB77:_ Yeah, I wanna be strong for him, I wanna make him feel less afraid about this one thing. You know. I can influence that.

_CB77:_ I wish you could be here. It’d be easier that way.

_Changbin:_ I’m sorry, Korea needs me. A music scene isn’t going to happen without me.

_Changbin:_ Trust me, I’ve done all sorts of horrible stuff, like look into when ferry tickets back are cheapest. Discount airline flights. I’m embarrassing.

_CB77:_ Yeah, I started looking at teaching jobs in Seoul again. Guess we’ve got it bad huh?

_Changbin:_ I’ve done at least one thing since I got back other than crying. I’m doing an open mic night tonight. If anyone else is good I’ll have some more garbage quality bootlegs to send you.

_CB77:_ No rest for those who are wicked, huh?

_Changbin:_ Do not act like you and Han haven’t recorded a half dozen more songs under a fuck blanket. Since I left. 

“Chan!” Han interrupts. Han’s got his face pressed up against the slanted open glass window so that his face is distorted. He talks into the classroom. “Come play with us. Haruto had to go home, and we need someone on first base.”

Chan rises from the chair, walks to the window and sticks his hand through the opening. Han grabs it immediately. “I’m working.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, but Changbin’s online.”

Han’s eyes grow wide and excited. “You have ten minutes, and then you have to come pitch so I can get on the computer.”

* * *

 

_August 5th,_ 1998

Jisung arrived on this island with twenty ringgit that are effectively useless now, since he’s uncertain if he’ll ever be in Kuala Lumpur again, and 2800 yen, 2500 of which he owes Changbin.  Even though he’s fucking broke, he quickly learns that there’s a different kind of currency here on this island.

“What on Earth are you doing?” Chan had some faculty meetings today. They were supposed to end by one-thirty, but it’s well past three now. But he’s told Han that these meetings tend to run long, the faculty going on long tangents about how things used to be and how the old curriculum was more effective.

 “Being slightly less of a freeloader,” Han responds simply when Chan _finally_ meets him at the tiny grocery store near the shorefront.

The little old lady at the counter rings up the fruits of his labor. When it’s all bagged up in a little plastic bag with a big yellow smiley face, grabs it and wraps it around his wrist.

“Baby, I took the trash to the dumpster, I swept these floors, I mopped these floors, I stocked that cooler.” He feels a lot like he’s a little kid lately. Can’t read and can’t talk right cause he doesn’t speak the language. Corrected constantly for stuff he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. When he was a kid, no better way to get what he wanted than by begrudgingly doing some chores: empty the coke cans from out from underneath his bed, pick up his underwear from the floor. It works the exact same here on the island.

So he did some chores in exchange for some _amazing_ date supplies.

The cashier says something as Han holds the door open for Chan, and Chan laughs.

“What, she say I have a part time job now?”

“She says that her floor looks dirtier now than when you started, but it’s nice you stocked the cooler.”

“I’ll take it.” Jisung does his best to swallow the lump in his throat. He wants to hold Chan’s hand right now, but it’s difficult to know what they can and cannot get away with.

They spread out their bath towels spread an appropriate distance from one another on the sand.  Pushing the boundary, they rub sunscreen all over one another’s bodies. Those frantic, furtive touches are the best they can do under the scrutinous gaze of leather skinned octogenarians and the four or five kids that have wandered down from the school yard ranging from pre-k to high school and _constantly_ yell for Mr. Bang’s attention.

“Ah, sto-op,” Han pulls his legs up close to his body to block Chan. Chan’s in the midst of rubbing a huge glob of sunblock onto his chest. Being a bastard about it, he flicks his thumbs against Jisung’s nipples.

“It’s not rubbed in yet,” Chan _says_ it like he doesn’t know that he’s already half fucking hard. Chan actually rubs the rest of the sunscreen into his skin, and then lays back on his towel. “I don’t know if I’ve had a beach day since I got here.”

“Dude, honestly? Same. I can’t tell you the last time I went out to the beach.” He’s still half hard, but Chan’s moved on to the treasures in the grocery bag. “And I live…Lived,” god it sounds so weird to say it like that. In the past. Malaysia no more. “Like an hour, hour and ten in city traffic? From the beach.”

Chan hands him an ice cream. His dick is still kind of hard. “God this stuff is addictive.”

“I know,” Chan peels back the wrapper. Bubble gum pink tongue laps at blue ice cream. It’s not _helping._ “When I first got here they had some at this back to school pic-nic. I ate like five.”

“You barf bro?”

“Yeah, but only because I felt like super guilty and went for a run.”

And that should make him completely soft, but his dick is laser focused.

Everything is covered in a light so blinding white hot that he can’t see far beyond Chan, who he has to look at sideways in the sun. The ocean is a line of blinding white and sapphire that melts into crisp blue sky and everything looks and feels oversaturated.

Eating against the clock and the heat, the ice cream is gone quickly. They move onto the melon which is pre-sliced and packaged like meat on a Styrofoam tray. “Fruit is so expensive here.”

“You fit in with the locals,” Chan gestures to a pair of old men “jogging” down the beach in Spedos that show every wrinkle. “Complaining how much things cost.”

“Aw,” Jisung picks up a triangle shaped wedge of melon between his fingers, and holds it near his face. “It looks like him.”

“Who, Changbin?”

“Who Changbin!?” Jisung pumps his voice with faux incredulity. “Who else?” The island consists of two people, and the world consists of three.

Chan takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, and swallows. “Too sweet, don’t you think?”

* * *

 

_August 3 rd, 1998_

_CB77:_ CHAN WANTS TO FUCK ME?

_CB77:_ HOLY FUCK I’M TYPIN THIS AT THE SCHOOL RIGHT NOW? AM I GOING TO GET ARRESTED?

_CB77:_ HEY IT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOYFRIEND HAN.

_CB77:_ I MEAN I GUESS WE’RE NOT STEADY OR ANYTHING BUT ANYWAY I MADE CHAN GO PLAY BASEBALL, SO I COULD TALK TO YOU.

_Changbin:_ Okay, that clarifies a lot _._

_Changbin:_ 12/10 recommend getting fucked by Chan

_CB77:_ What out of ten am I?

_Changbin:_ Did you message me for validation on how good you fuck, or ?

_CB77:_ CHAN WANTS TO FUCK ME?

_Changbin:_ You fucked him right?

_CB77: YEs_

_Changbin:_ Listen, I’ve only had sex like, anywhere between one and five times depending on how you calculate when we met up. But, wouldn’t it be boring if you just had sex the same way the entire time?

_Changbin:_ I’d probably try most things twice.

_Changbin:_ Once for you, once for Chan.

_Changbin:_ Go get fucked Han. I mean it. Sincerely. From the bottom of my heart.

* * *

 

_August 15 th, 1998_

Han’s ferry ticket is booked. Since he’s leaving soon, Chan does everything that he can to indulge him. Instead of cooking at home, they get roadside stand oden.  Less time cycling, more time under shade trees writing lyrics. When they get home, he picks up the remote for the air conditioner and dials it all the way down immediately.

He knows that he can’t stop Han from leaving. But it’s almost like if he does all of this, indulge all of the things that Han likes in one go, he’ll think of him more often when he’s in Seoul.

After he pulls down the futons and arranges them upon the floor of his bedroom, there’s nothing left to do other than wait for Han to emerge from the shower. It never takes him long.

But two or three minutes becomes five or six. Then then, and then fifteen.

Chan turns on the small television that he keeps in his room propped up on a stack of encyclopedias from the year he was born. Lazily, he flips through the channels before deciding upon public television _._ They’re showing some documentary on shinkansen. Not exactly his thing, but he really doubts they’re going to watch much of anything. He puts the television on mute, and then reaches for his notepad.

Scribbling aimlessly, Chan finds that there is so much that he wants to say, and has so many words with which to say it, that he actually has so few. Like a stone walled dam with a single crack. A minute trickle that threatens, for better or for worse, to never burst.

When Han does enter the room, he does so with an uncharacteristic silence. The sound of the pipes groaning in protest when he turned off the shower made more audible noise than he does. Nevertheless, he enters the room wearing _only_ a pair of underwear.

Chan’s underwear.

Han flicks the lights off, pads across the room, and sinks down onto the futons next to Chan so that he’s half sitting in his lap and half sitting upon the futon.

“Hey.” Han’s breath smells like toothpaste. His skin, like Chan’s soap.

He rarely smells of both at once.

“Hey.” Notebook instantly discarded, Chan cannot help but run his hand from just below Han’s knee up his thigh. After all, his legs are thrown over Chan.

“What are we watchin?”

“Its uh,” his skin feels soft and smooth too. Like maybe he used some of Chan’s lotion. “Train stuff.” Oh _smooth._  

For a moment, they just sit there in the dark and in the silence watching train stuff. Its times like these that he wishes that Changbin were here to fill in the cracks, wring out the discomfort, and abrasively scrub them clean with honesty.

But he’s not. So Chan does the next best thing and fills in the gaps himself by hefting Han the rest of the way up into his lap. Han loops his arms around his neck and holds onto him tightly.

Their kiss starts slowly, closed mouth against closed mouth. One question answered with another question. Then, Han begins to answer slowly. Parts his lips and breathes into Chan. Chan drags his tongue across his lower lip, and then dips inside. Han laps at him, confidence returning to him slowly.

When they break, Chan sees Han bathed in the blue light of the television.

“You can um.” Another kiss, quick but hungry. “I want you to fuck me.”

* * *

Back in Osaka, Chan said that he could hear his heart beating fast. He wonders how fast its beating right now.

Don’t get him wrong. He wants this. Really, really badly. Like, hasn’t gotten off _since_ then without thinking about it. Its just that, he’s thought about sex…almost constantly now for years. Thought about sex, in almost every configuration he could think of, except _like that._ Not until Chan spoke it into existence outside of the video rental store.  

He’s straddling Chan, hands splayed wide across his chest. Patient at first, swipe of the tongue, and then hungry and needy. Teeth pull at his lower lip and force successive kiss after successive kiss. How long? How long will he be in Seoul before he forgets how good kissing Chan feels?

More than four weeks. The feeling of Changbin biting his lower lip until it was fat and red is still fresh in his mind.

Hands roam from the expanse of his shoulders, down his flank, setting his skin aflame until Chan’s hands rest on his ass. Then, and only then, is he reminded of what they’re about to do. What _he’s_ going to do. He can feel his own palms grow sweaty, and he rubs them against the cotton of Chan’s faded t-shirt.

“I’m going to make you feel so good,” Chan’s voice is husky.

“I know.” No quip. No comment about his own prowess. It all dries up on his tongue because he has _no idea._

Chan rolls them over so that he’s on his back. So its going to be like that, and wouldn’t it be easier if he could bury his face in the pillow while Chan hit it from behind?

Jisung leans upward to pull at the hem of Chan’s shirt. Chan hooks his fingers into the waistband of his underwear and pulls them downward.

Chan blankets Han’s body with his own and kisses him like he wants him to question everything that he knows. Tender and needy at once. Moving to his neck, Chan worries the skin just below his ear until it feels red, but kiss-bites his pulse point until he screws his eyes shut and gasps in discomfort.

“Ah—”

“Sorry,” another kiss. “I just—” Chan buries his face into the crook of his neck like he’s embarrassed.

“You want Channgbin to see, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t say stop,” he kind of likes it. The way that Chan isn’t too _gentle_ with him but is still so concerned with him.

 Chan keeps going, kissing and lapping and sucking, against his skin. Down his collar bones until Chan takes a nipple in his mouth.

“ _Fuck.”_ Cause in the past, nipples were for touching, not being touched. “Oh, my god,” when Chan pulls off and cold air makes his damp skin pique.

“You’re so sensitive,” before Chan moves onto the other nipple.

Chan continues to kiss fire down his chest and his stomach. Sucks another set of raspberry marks on his collar bone, and the v of his hips and the inside of his thigh.

“Bang Chan, you’re dangerous.”

“Babe,” He’s pretty sure Chan only calls him this because Jisung calls him _baby,_  but it’s actually real hot. “You don’t know the half of it.”

He expects it when Chan swipes his tongue experimentally across the head of his cock. Electric jolt, he arches his hips up into it. Doesn’t think twice when he licks a long stripe from the root to the tip. With Chan’s mouth on his cock, it’s hard to feel _afraid_ of the pressure of the pad of Chan’s finger rubbing against his hole in slow circles.

“ _Chan please._ ”

“I uh,” Chan moves back up his body to steal another kiss. They part with a smack. “I wanna do something, but it’s like. _Really dirty.”_

Sounds like a challenge. “Yeah?” With Chan settled between his knees like this, hovering over his body, he can loop one foot around his middle and try to pull him close. Try to fitfully grind his cock against Chan’s. “Try me.”

“I wanna like, you know.” No, he doesn’t and if it’s got Chan suddenly this shy he _needs to know._ “Eat you out.”

Oh. _Oh_. “Oh,” _fuck._ “Yeah. Yeah do that.”

It sounds so good until Chan settles back between his legs, has him turn slightly onto his side and puts his face between his cheeks. Face hot with embarrassment, it only burns hotter when he feels the first experimental swipe of Chan’s tongue against his hole.

He can’t stop the embarrassing squeal that spills from his mouth and jerk of his hips, as if Chan had just thrown ice down the back of his shirt.

“Hey,” he can hear the smile in Chan’s voice. Immediately it puts him at ease. “It’s okay. I want to do this. Relax,” said with the squeeze of his thigh.

When Chan tries again, he is both simultaneously bolder and more restrained. Featherlight trace of his tongue from his balls to the crest of his tailbone.

“Better?”

“Better.”

Bolder still, Chan focuses now just on his hole. Laps across it and teases at the rim. Teeth graze against his cheek briefly before he comes back and laps at him again. Just enough contact to make his dick twitch _harder._

“Oh my god.” This feels really good. Suddenly, the idea of Chan’s dick inside of him doesn’t seem so scary.

Soft kisses around the rim lull him into a false sense of relaxation. Almost disguise the slight pressure of Chan’s tongue prodding lightly at the taut band of muscle. Not quite inside, but the feeling of intrusion lingers.

“Chan?”

“Trust me,” Chan hums against his thigh. He sounds content. Like he likes this too. “Hand me the stuff yeah?”

Han complies, reaching for the lube and condoms that Chan had the foresight to throw onto the futon before they got started.

It’s a move straight from a porno. Chan spits onto his hole, spreads the viscous liquid across his hole with the pad of his finger, and goddamn if that doesn’t make him want to beg for it. “Chan, stop teasing me.”

Chan, because he’s so good to him, doesn’t make him wait, just works his finger in slowly.

“Ah,” stings but he absolutely wants more.

Chan opens the bottle of lube now, and pours a generous amount across his fingers and his hole. He knows this, because he can feel the sticky damp between his thighs, and down the crack of his ass, and his balls.

Only then does he work the rest of his finger inside.

“Kinda okay right?”

“Yeah,” his body feels tense right now, but he’s certainly not in agony. Absolutely understand how this could be good.

Chan presses against his walls, and its like he feels it in his cock.

A moan slips from his mouth. Chan asks in a pleased tone, “maybe more than okay?”

“Y-yeah.”

When he relaxes around Chan, another finger is added.

Swirl of the tongue and curve of Chan’s finger and Han’s absolutely ruined. His body burns hot with fever that is both caused and cured by Chan. His cock bobs against his stomach, and it takes every ounce of his self control not to jerk himself off.

It’s embarrassing. Not just how badly he wants it, but how much he’s still afraid of it. He feels so full already.

In every lick, every flick of the tongue, and drag of the teeth Chan pries out a little bit more of what Han wants to hide until his body, pulled tight, melts like soda ice cream left in the sun out onto the futon.

“Han? How are you doing?” Chan pulls his tongue away.

Cold, climate-controlled air hits damp skin, and he can’t help but tighten around Chan’s fingers. “Think I’m ready.”

“Sure?”

“Ready as I’m gonna get.”

“Okay,” and suddenly feeling empty is worse than the fear of what comes next.

Chan moves back up the futon, and reaches for a condom.

Han stops him. “Do we have to? In the shower we didn’t” It’s probably a stupid thing to ask for, but he feels so close to Chan _right now._ And, in some ways, all they have is _right now_.

Chan cups his chin and pulls him into a smoldering kiss. Even though he wiped them clean on the sheets, his fingers are still sticky. When the kiss ends, Chan keeps cupping his chin, looking at him in the white blue glow of the television light.

Its easy to nudge Chan’s sticky, musty fingers into his mouth.

Chan moans as Jisung flicks his tongue between his fingers. Chan responds without words.

They fall into a position that is intimate, yet uncoordinated. Chan presses one of his thighs to his chest. Jisung wraps the other around Chan’s waist. 

Chan pushes in honey slow and just as sweet. It hurts when Chan fucks into him, but in a way that makes his cock twitch against Chan’s stomach. Like having his hair pulled. Like having his neck bitten.

When Chan’s got his forehead pressed against his, his entire world becomes deep brown eyes that offer him the world. Sweat slicked skin slides against sweat slicked skin, their noses bump together, and somehow, they find each other for another, fragile-bruised kiss.

As the sting fades to a burn that fans out across his stomach and his chest, he has to wonder why he ever felt afraid. Of the pain. Of the embarrassment. In reality, the way that Chan makes him feel so vulnerable is much more frightening.

The entire time they’ve been on the island Chan has set a demanding pace for him, but never more than he could handle. He treats this the exact same way. Slow rolls of his hips accented by sticky kisses increase in tempo until kisses fade into ragged gasps against each others necks.

“Cha-an,” in a needy voice that doesn’t even sound like his own. Its just that Chan’s cock affects every part of his body. Makes him draw up tight when he pushes in and unfurl when he pulls out. Feels it deep inside, but his cock twitches too. “S’good. S’fucking good. Please--”

“Yeah,” Chan wraps his hand around his cock and uses the gratuitous amount of precum that’s leaked down his cock as lubricant. “Please yeah. Please cum Han. Han, I’m so close.”

He likes it when Chan rambles like this. Drowns out his own nonsense, “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Chan. Keep fucking fucking me.” Blends together and makes one hypnotic chant.

He finally cums when Chan’s busting deep inside of him. He just feels the twitch and the wet, and the last breathy little, “ _Han”_ and that’s it.

Chan jerks him through it and he’s cumming on his stomach and he’s cumming onto Chan’s hand and he’s cumming onto the sheets like he hasn’t busted a nut in weeks.

It’s awesome. Chan’s awesome.

* * *

 

At the start of all this, if he had to bet that one of them was going to say it, he’d bet Han. One hundred percent. He makes jokes about getting married at the temple at least twice a day. Once when they ride towards the school, and once when they ride back home. He’s mentioned several times that he hopes Changbin wants to move in together as soon as possible. Han told him that he told Rania that he was in love within an hour of meeting her.

Han falls hard and Han falls fast.

Long after midnight. Long after he’s wiped Han off with a wet washrag, because he couldn’t coax him into the shower. Long after Han’s fallen asleep, Chan wraps his arms around a sleeping Han and says it first.

He says it first in Japanese, and says it first in a layer of metaphor.

“What do they always say on television? Be buried in the same grave as me?” Morbid, but when in Rome, do as the Romans. When in Japan, do as the Japanese. “A big one, so Changbin can rot with us too.” And then, “I’ll make miso for you ever day. They say that on television too. Period dramas mostly.” And then finally, plainly, “I love you.” And finally, in Korean this time, emboldened by a loud snore form Han. “I love you.”

* * *

 

_August 20 th, 1998_

The only reason Changbin didn’t ditch is because it’s the first day of class. Not that he would know what to do with the extra time. He scrubbed down his apartment last night because he couldn’t sleep…preventative measures based on what Chan’s told him.

When the lecturer’s done droning, and he’s done feeling every _tick-tock, tick-tock_ of the lecture hall clock in his bones, and he’s able to close the empty notebook page that he’d _intended_ to write lyrics on, he heads to the station.

And…for whatever reason, he thought that would take him two full hours.

Since the station can’t magically bend time forward and hasten Han’s arrival, he finds himself wandering through a nearby shopping center, panic buying all kinds of crap that he doesn’t need.

A new notebook and a package full of cat shaped erasers, because _what if Chan and Han are a thing now? A thing without him._

A package of socks, because _what if Han gets on his fucking nerves?_

A container of hand cream, because _what if Han decides to go back to Malaysia after three weeks?_

A new toothbrush, because _what if he has bad breath?_

A second new toothbrush, because _what if Han wants to stay the night?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to The Internet, saying you want to be buried with someone/saying you want to eat miso with someone every day is a traditional, if not somewhat dated marriage proposal https://www.tofugu.com/japan/proposing-to-a-japanese-girl/ So, there's that. MUCH more Changbin next chapter (as you can probably tell)


	7. Happy Bivouac

_August 20 th, 1998_

On the ferry, and the train, little thoughts, like ants ate away at what Chan told him, “it will be alright.” In it’s wake, all that’s left is the constant, blaring alarm in his brain, “ _FUCK. FUCK_. _FUCK.”_

He’s only got a change of clothes, some Japanese candy, some cassette tapes, and some socks, but the bag over his shoulder feels so _damn_ heavy. He hasn’t seen his parents in almost six months, setting foot in a country he hasn’t so much as visited in five years, no job, no classes to go to. No pressure. Just the promise of Changbin waiting for him at the station.

Holy fuck.

The train pulls into the station, and it takes every ounce of his energy to will himself off of the train instead of continuing to go north. Even more effort to not hop from the northbound train to the south on the platform and head back in the direction of the ferry.

Dodging and weaving tired business men slinking off to the bar, little old ladies, and travelers laden down with far more luggage than him, he hedges his way up the first flight of stairs. Trips over his feet, and bumps into others because he’s constantly scanning the mass of people just beyond the turnstile.

Admittedly, he was kind of afraid he’d forget Changbin, but without fail he’s able to pick out _that_ black mop in a sea of mops. But he does. “Changbin!”

Changbin’s eyes are glued to a cheap, weekly comic.

Shuffle, push into the turnstile and, “Changbin!”

That finally earns his attention.

Changbin tosses the comic and plastic shopping bag wrapped around his wrist to the floor. Runs to meet him with just as much enthusiasm, pounces on _him_ this time, and somehow he’s got enough sense to grab around his boyfriend’s legs and lift him upward.

Cause he could really use a fucking anchor right now. Cause he feels like he’s gonna float away, off the peninsula and right back to…To where? Where else but here?

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

It’s only been four weeks. It’s kind of like meeting him all over again. Just, this time he knows that Changbin loves to have his earlobes sucked on. Knows that after he gets fucked Changbin gets real soft and real sweet.

Sweat makes his palms slick, and he has to let Changbin down. He won’t float away.

Together, they walk up the final flights of stairs feeling the _whoosh_ of cold air against their sweat damp skin as they climb higher and higher.

The city appears before them, framed by the exit of the train station. It all seemed so big back then, when he was still kind of a kid. Now, it seems even bigger.

The city skyline is torn away from him before he can truly take it all in.

Changbin pulls them into an alcove, a little place where the station walls tuck and fold into the side of a sandwich shop. Their mouths crash together, and the kiss is urgent without true cause.

“Holy fuck, I missed you,” he whispers before pulling Changbin back into another, needy kiss.

When they part, it’s sticky and viscous, and only a matter of seconds before they’re pulled back into one another. “I’m so glad you’re here,” Changbin husks into the crook of his shoulder.

Where Jisung expects another kiss, there’s silence. Changbin looks him up and down in equal parts evaluation and want, sizing up his slightly too large clothes, and the shameless bruise on his neck. “You smell like him. Fuck, you’re even wearing his clothes.”

Another kiss, and the fists clenched around his shirt relax, slide up underneath his shirt. Changbin bites his lip until it feels plump between his teeth. When they pull back, it’s Jisung’s turn to examine Changbin.

His expression is equal parts soft and confused, and it very much means that Changbin feels vulnerable now. Conflicted. But he gets it. He really does. It’s the same storm of emotions that he has. His sorrow of not wanting to leave, similar to Changbin’s missing Chan. Conflicting, their eagerness to see each other. “Its okay. I miss him too.”

* * *

 

The Earth moving, whole body tingling, neighbors call the cops because they think there’s a burglary, reunion sex that Changbin planned will have to wait. This becomes apparent to him when Han fishes a crumpled piece of paper from his pants pocket and asks him, “can you help me find this address?” And then his voice gets real small, which means Changbin’s got to tuck his dick into the waistband of his metaphorical briefs and be a good person. “Told my mom I’d be home for dinner.”

And that’s totally fine. Completely. It’s been longer since Han’s seen his parents than they’ve seen each other.  Totally, completely, fine, even though Han’s wearing Chan’s clothes. His skin is super tanned, and Changbin’s dying to know if it goes all over, or if he’s got little white tan lines over his thighs.

“Oh, that’s right.” Changbin takes the piece of paper and unfolds it “You haven’t been to your parents’ place yet.” Immediately his eyes cross at the childish, unsightly scrawl on the paper, “You have serial killer handwriting.”

“You told me that when I sent you the birthday card.” He did. Han sent him a birthday card printed on paper that looked older than both of them. Chan sent him a note written on official school letter head in pink gel-pen. All of it was stuffed into a big padded envelope with a few gatchapon toys. “Yeah, and I keep wanting to take the loop to the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s like, ingrained.”

“I can get us there, but.” As they approach the crosswalk, Changbin looks both ways before grabbing Han’s wrist and pulling him across. The light is still green. “Don’t you usually only meet parents when it’s serious?”

Han wraps his arms around his waist and nuzzles his neck. They step on one another’s feet and bump into each other as they walk down the street, much to the annoyance of passerby trying to make it home after work. “Baby. It’s real serious.”

* * *

 

 It all sort of falls into place when he meets Han’s parents. Sort of like when you cram all the junk in your room into the closet, push the door into the frame, and hear something crash inside.

Han’s parents are incredibly young. Dressed stylishly, they look more like university students than they do someone’s parents.

When Han said that his mother expected him home for dinner, Changbin imagined some kind of homecooked meal. Kimchi, braised meat and noodles. Well, that’s what his mom would make anyway. Instead, there’s takeout boxes spread out upon the table filled with Mediterranean food, which Changbin’s never had before.

Conversation isn’t so much a conversation. Han and his parents all but yell over one another to catch up.

His father asks with genuine interest, “Han says that you met on the internet?” At home, his mother covers her ear when he tells his dad about chatrooms and message boards. Han’s mom interjects, “we bought a blender off the internet last month.”

“Yep, we met--”

That’s all he can manage before Han cuts in, “We run a message board for musicians. Oh my god, how am I gonna pay for hosting now Changbin?”

“We could—” Changbin isn’t quite sure why he bothers.

“Well, you should ask for donations, nothing’s free sweetie,” Han’s mom cuts in.  

These people could hold so much animosity toward one another, but they don’t. At least, not on the surface.  Changbin had it towards them when he walked into the door, who could just let their son go? Now he kind of gets it. Han’s parents don’t seem to care so much if he fucks up so long as he keeps going. Kind of weird. Kind of cool.

* * *

 

CB77: I’m thinking about you both. I hope your first day in Seoul together was amazing.  

_J.One:_ We miss you too.

_J.One:_ Han’s rents say hi too.

_J.One:_ We’re on their computer.

_J.One:_ This is Changbin btw. Han’s breathing down my neck though.

_CB77:_ I figured it out. How’s Seoul Han? 

_J.One:_ GOOD. OH, guess who just dunked his spoon into hummus and ate it?

_CB77:_ Changbin you didn’t

J.One: Fuck off.

_J.One is offline._

_J.One is online._

_J.One:_ Oh my god he’s so pissed off.

_J.One:_ Anyway, guess who got his cast cut off? His hand is totally normal by the way. So if you were expecting like, a little baby hand, or a shriveled monkey paw or something you’re gonna be super disappointed.

_J.One:_ I was super disappointed.

* * *

 

His impulse buy toothbrushes were a really, really good idea. Han’s mom insists that he can’t take the train home if he’s drunk. He has one beer because Han’s dad insisted, and sure his face gets a little flushed, but he isn’t going to argue. Not if it means more time with Han.  

The thing that surprises him the most as he unravels the man and the mystery that is Han Jisung isn’t the joyous yelling at dinner. It’s not the openness in which Han’s parents tell him that they’re both from Seoul but met in New York in college, or how they had to come promptly back home before the start of their third year, “because of Jisung.”

It isn’t the model trains in the second bedroom. It isn’t the stair stepper adorned with silky women’s slips hung over the handrail, each adorned with no less than one long run up the seam. No, it’s the thing next to it. A thin layer of dust, the same layer that covers the trains and the stair stepper, accents the headboard.

They were expecting him since they moved back.

Changbin makes himself right at home, snuggling under the covers and hiding from the air conditioner that Han’s parents keep cranked high.

“You have some more clothes in there.” Changbin gestures to one of the several open cardboard boxes scattered about the room. He’s assuming it was whatever left from his parents’ house in Malaysia. “Most of them are ugly as hell. And this.” Changbin waves a Gameboy that he’d extracted from one of the boxes. “Batteries are dead though.”

Han enters the room and sits upon the guest futon on the floor instead of coming to bed with him, and it doesn’t sit right.

So Changbin gets up off the bed and sinks down onto the floor.

Han’s body remains rigid, even though Changbin drapes himself over Han’s body. “What?” and then, “I get it. Cause we’re at your folks’ house right?” If they were at his parents’ house, he wouldn’t want Han to touch him for fear that the wall separating the bedrooms would crumble.

“Kinda,” Han laughs. He turns toward Changbin and kisses him in a way that’s so soft and unfamiliar. The caution contrasts so sharply with the feeling of Han’s hard cock pressed against his thigh. “I got hard just seeing you in my bed.” Interrupted with a kiss. “Or, maybe I was thinking of you in the shower,” another kiss. “Or maybe it was from making out at the train station.” Another kiss. They need each other, but they’re both so desperate not to feed the flames of desperation.

But a flame such as this burns with very little fuel, and grows hot in hues of blue frustration and white confusion. He’s here with Han now, touching him chest to chest, but it still doesn’t feel real. Won’t be convinced that Han isn’t just going to fade into stardust until he’s got rugburn, love bites, something that lasts and something that he knows is real.

“Do you want to?” But he’s already taking off his shirt.

“Yeah.”

Changbin’s hands glide over Han’s body. The drag of cotton feels abrasive in comparison to smooth satiny skin. Changbin pushes the shirt upward, and Han wriggles out of it.  Changbin swears that he can feel the thunder of Han’s heart against his chest. A single word could call off what they’re about to do, yet he knows that Han wants this just as much as he does.

“Holy fuck, you’re so hot Changbin.” Han’s voice is barely a whisper, but it feels like a shout that wakes him up from the month long dream he’s been trapped in.

“I thought about you every night.” Changbin retraces touches across Han’s now bare skin. No tan lines, at least not on his chest. His face feels flushed hot from all the garbage that’s coming out of his mouth, but embarrassment doesn’t stop him from running his fingertips down Han’s chest, brush against pert brown nipples and trace the faint lines on his stomach that Han insists is a six pack in the making.

“I thought about you too.” Han says this as he grabs his ass and squeezes. Grinds their cocks together in deliciously frustrating friction. “Whatever we were doing, I thought about how you’d fit.”

“Fuck—”  Changbin tugs at his waistband. Han quickly makes short work of his own underwear.

Changbin reaches for his plastic shopping bag on the floor, empties the contents and rifles through it without so much as looking at the trinkets spilled onto the carpet until he finds the hand cream.

It’s better than nothing.

Changbin lines up their cocks, Han wraps his legs around Changbin’s middle. Changbin’s hand wrapped around the bases of their cocks, Han’s on top teasing the tip, they tug at each other in slow, disjointed movements that feel impossibly good.

“I wanna fuck you while Chan’s fucking me.”

Han speaks in a barely audible whisper, but it may as well be a shout. They’re playing with fire after dousing themselves in gasoline, and yet neither of them can stop.

Han’s hand feels rough over the tip of cock when he smears precum over the head. “I wanna suck you off while Chan fucks you,” his voice short, breathy, and less easily controlled.

What Han says goes right to his cock, but it’s so, so dangerous.

Changbin shuts him up in the only way that he knows how by demanding a kiss that’s deep and urgent. It’s like Han’s confessing to him a beautiful secret just for him and he cannot bear to hear it. Because when kissing isn’t enough to stop those delicious noises from spilling from Han’s mouth, Changbin clamps his hand over his lips.

Screws his own eyes shut and concentrates of the addictive, frustrating feeling of his skin against skin.

For a moment, there’s nothing but silence and urgency. Han spills into his hand with little warning, but there’s little warning to give when they cannot see one another and they cannot talk. With other senses muted, it’s easy to become lost in the sensation of touch.

He cums into Han’s hand soon after. Even though it was quick, and illicit, it makes him feel light headed and warm in the best kind of way. He’s never felt closer to Han, and he knows that’s because Han’s let him.  

“Don’t go to sleep yet Changbin.”

“Hm? I’m not. Just thinking.”

“I don’t wanna go to sleep. If I sleep, tomorrow will come. Tomorrow, people will start having expectations of me. Today, I’m enough for everyone.”

 He finds Han’s lips in the dark through trial and error, bump noses, cheek kiss, lip smack. “You’re enough for me.”

* * *

 

_Sept 12th 1998_

For awhile, Changbin thought that Chan got the honeymoon, and he got the happily ever after.

That was stupid.

Nothing about this was going to be easy. In his mind, he’s always kind of known. Its so very clear that Han was left in Malaysia a child, left Japan a man, yet lingers here and now in Korea somewhere in-between. It’s even harder for Changbin to help him when he isn’t particularly adept at these things himself.

_Changbin:_ At least this isn’t as bad as the hardware store

_CB77:_????

_Changbin:_ He said that he told you about this one.

_Changbin:_ He got a job mixing paint at the hardware store, but most of the stuff that he mixed was just _wrong._ So he got fired after like, three days.

_Changbin:_ So, it turns out he’s a little bit red green colorblind Chan.

_CB77:_ A little bit? Oh god. That’s awful.

_Changbin:_ it might explain why he failed his art classes in Malaysia.

_CB77:_ So this is the fourth one right?

_Changbin:_ Five. There was the noodle shop. Showed up to his first day of work to find a post it note taped to the door that they were closed indefinitely.

  _Changbin:_ I’m not worried about him landing or keeping a job. Han is our big annoying housecat that lands on his feet.

_CB77:_ Right. But the universe should stop kicking him while he’s down.

_Changbin:_ Uggggh. I wish you were here to make everything better.

_CB77:_ I can’t even edit my own resume properly.

_September 13th, 1998_

On the island, Chan made sure that Jisung fit into his life perfectly and subtly, like a white Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt worn underneath your school uniform.

When he returns to Seoul, Changbin demands the opposite of him and wears him out boldly, brashly, like a leather studded jacket at Sunday school.

Tonight they’re at a bar called _Mong,_ which Changbin has decided is his favorite. Tonight, it’s Changbin’s favorite haunt in the city. Last night, it was _The Pink Holse,_ and it’s really interesting, because he knows for a fact, that Changbin loves to talk about how much _Mong,_ and _Pink Hole_ suck.

It isn’t until he’s balancing four neon blue shots between his hands, something that the bar tender called “Blue Tingle,” that he _gets_ it.

When he went up to the bar, he left Changbin at a tiny corner booth alone. When he returns, the table is filled with people. But, Changbin’s expression tells him everything. A mischievous glint in his eyes suggests that he has something to prove. Wild gestures mean that he’s talking a really, really big game.

“Look. Look at him,” Changbin’s voice rises up above the bar chatter and thumping music.

“Hey babe,” he sets the shot glasses down with a satisfying _clink_ and pushes two over toward Changbin.

Someone with a broad nose and a wide smile slinks out of the booth to let Han reclaim his spot next to Changbin. On Changbin’s other side, is a boy whose face looks like he was torn from the pages of a fashion magazine and hairstyle looks like something out of a crime scene.

He’d bet everything he had right now: an expired coupon and a train pass with 6000 won on it, that he could figure out who these guys are.

“Look who is sitting here next to me,” Changbin presses himself so close that the heat of Changbin’s body feels stifling in the club. So close, that he’s basically sitting in his lap. “Ask me. Ask who this is.”

“Who is this Changbin?” The boy looks at Changbin with a cocked head, raised brow, and half smirk. It’s the kind of expression he’d throw to a friend any time he wanted to be a dick for the fun of it, but watching someone else do it to Changbin is infuriating.

“Well Hyunjin, funny you should ask. This—”

Yeah. He’s heard about this one.

Jisung leans over Changbin, purposefully interrupting the introduction. Of course, he makes sure to put on his biggest, and brightest smile. His hand feels heavy, but somehow he still manages to shake Hyunjin’s hand aggressively. “I’m Changbin’s boyfriend!”

“His name is Han Jisung, and he’s mine.” Changbin rests his hand on his own thigh, dangerously close to his crotch and squeezes slightly.

“Nice to meet you.”

Damn right it is. Asshole.

When Changbin steals a kiss from him, it’s all thrown into flux again. Lychee liquor spills down his wrist. It takes Jisung a moment to kiss back. When he does, he becomes overeager, desperately trying to deepen the kiss and not caring that Changbin’s friends are here.

So that’s how it is.

Chan has a very comfortable, inward peace about himself. It’s not some crushing secret, nor is it something that he has to shout about from the top of the highest point, because Chan knows and that’s enough. Changbin on the other hand lives in spaces where he can be as loud as he wants to, but hasn’t had anything worth shouting about until this very moment. His presence at Changbin’s side, lets Changbin scream until his throat feels sore.

If he thinks about it, and he does, a lot, he can’t help but compare himself to Changbin and Chan constantly.

If he had to pick, which one would he rather be more like?

And is it okay, or is it just cliché that he’d like to be somewhere right in the middle?

Changbin pounds his drinks quickly, and with it a rose colored blush blossoms upon his face. Foolishly, Jisung does the same, “Hannie, Hannie, Hannie. C’mon, dance with me.”

Changbin pulls him onto the floor, and loops his arms around his neck, effectively becoming jelly against him.

 “What’s wrong?” Changbin all but yells into his ear over the sound of the bass.

Nothing. He looks at Changbin with a puzzled expression.

“You look like you realized you left the oven on back in Malaysia or something.”

It’s like Changbin’s words act as a reminder to make his face match how he feels. His mouth spreads into a grin. “You’re my boyfriend!” He yells up over the music.

“Yeah,” Changbin yells back as he writhes to the music.

“I’m your boyfriend!”

“Yeah.”

Changbin baptizes his new identity with fire. He loves it.

* * *

__

_Sept 15 th, 1998_

 “Hey.” Han shows up at his door unannounced at noon on a Tuesday. His face is red, like he ran over here. Slung over his back is a mesh bag filled with clothes.

Changbin’s just gone to bed. Yes. Against his better judgement he did wake up at five yesterday, study until it was time to go to a show, go to the show, and stay out until it was time for his 8 AM class. Han was right by his side until about six in the morning when he slunk home to nap.

Not quite awake and not quite asleep, he just feels bitter “Hey.”

“I wanna do my laundry.”

“Okay…”

“Nothing has fucking gone right this week. If I start doing my own laundry, instead of my mom, it’s like I have control over this one thing—” Han puffs his cheeks out. He does that when he’s frustrated or confused. “So I know for a fact that I’m changing, and it’s different this time.”

That’s all it takes for his callousness to melt. Han does it every time. This is important to Han. So, for now, it’s important to him. “Okay.” Changbin leaves the door to his apartment open, turns on his heel, and stomps inside.

Changbin stuffs his sock clad feet into a pair of sun-cracked Adidas sandals, and together they walk the three blocks to the neighborhood laundromat.

 “Do you like, sort it out?”

Changbin can _feel_ his heart pound in his chest. Because, no. No he doesn’t, but Han picked him and so the pressure is on him to teach Han _properly._

“Usually no. I wear a lot of black but…” The air in the laundromat is warm-wet and detergent scented. It feels thick on his tongue.  Changbin starts grabbing his socks and dumping them into an empty washing machine. “Together we probably have enough for a separate load.”

“You wanna like, wash your underwear with mine?” Han smirks at him. “Gross.”

“You’re right. That’s crossing the line. We really need some boundaries.”

After the machines are loaded, Changbin reads for one of his classes with blurry, sleep deprived eyes. Han fills out job applications at a glacial pace, an attempt to make his childish scrawl legible.

“Skills….” Han drums his fingers against the table. “Skills skills skills. Let’s see I manage a website. I know a little English. Malay. I know Malay really well.”

Changbin can see the logo on the top of the paper and it can’t help but make him smile. The convenience store off campus probably doesn’t need a Malay translator, but they’d be pretty lucky to have one.

When everything’s washed and dried, Changbin _starts_ stuffing everything into his own mesh bag as usual, but stops suddenly. “Oh, we should fold this so it doesn’t get wrinkled.”

“Okay.”

It becomes very clear very quickly that neither of them know what they’re doing. Changbin’s shirts look fine. But something happens with his pants.

Somehow everything looks _worse_ than if they’d just stuffed everything into their bags despite the fact that they tried so fucking hard.

“I’m gonna apply at the nightclub.”

They turned him down once before. “Again?”

“Yeah, I saw their DJ the other day at the record store. They had some people walk out because of the changes. Plus,” Jisung takes a shirt, shakes it out, and folds it surprisingly well given the pile of crumpled laundry in his folded pile. “Someone important told me to try most things twice.”

_October 1 st, 1998_

_CB77:_ If you guys try to cook again, I pulled some recipes. They should be really simple, especially if you bought a knife, and a can opener. Like I told you.

_J.One:_ Chan, my man, we appreciate you but in fact that is not needed. Ya boy landed a job, one that he _will_ be keeping. Because I made it through the first three nights without getting fired, which is as you know a new record.

_CB77:_ Congrats!!!!! Where?

_J.One:_ CAKESHOP. It’s one of those dying business night clubs that’s trying really hard to cater to younger people. Barback. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Tuesdays.  

_J.One:_ So I’m taking our boy out for a nice romantic dinner at Lotteria. Chicken duo, with the ice cream floats. You’ll have to take a rain check Chan but the next time we’re in the same country. Baby. It’s on. I’ll take you to pizza. We’ll get one of those new shrimp and steak ones.

_CB77:_ Can we just get pepperoni? You have to understand. I grew up in Australia and in Australia that’s just wrong.

_Changbin:_ First of all dickprint, you said you were at your parents’ the past few days.

_J.One:_ I am at my parents. I didn’t want to tell you until I knew I wouldn’t get fired right away.

_Changbin:_ Second of all, hell yes.  

_Changbin:_ Third of all, you shouldn’t spend your check before you have it. But, I want a bulgogi burger and sweet potatoes. Meet me at 9.

* * *

 

_October 17 th, 1998_

_TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY. LEGENDARY UNDERGROUND RAPPERS J.ONE AND SPEARB TAKE THE STAGE TO MUSIC PROUCE BY CB77 AT CAKESHOP IN HANNAM._ If you’re lucky, I might also clear away your empty glasses cause I work there now _–J.One_

_Re: TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY:_ Trust me when I say, this track is absolutely fire. I wish I could come.— _CB77_

_Re: TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY:_ Have not you not ever come when I’m around— _J.One_

_Re: TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY:_ You’re technically violating the rules, and I will block you—SeoChangbin

Re: TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY: Is this the open mic night you were telling me about?— _NotBrian_

_Re: TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY:_ Kiind of. Open mic at 9. The main event at midnight. –J.One 

_Re:_   _TONIGHT ONE NIGHT ONLY:_ most of us have lived in the same city our whole lives. We’re just now getting together because of these two? – _AprilJ_

* * *

_October 23rd, 1998_

They got to the venue early because the plan was to watch open mic. But even the most well intended plans get ruined. There’s a palpable electric in the air, and Han can’t decide if it’s the kind of night where they’re going to lick a battery just for the tingle, or jam their fingers into a light socket just to see the spark.

Upon arriving at _Cakeshop,_ Han orders shots that glow pink in the black lights, and glow fluorescent green when Changbin spills it down the front of his shirt because his hands shake so badly.

Hyunjin asks jokingly, “you nervous Binnie?”

And Jisung responds, “fuck off, long torso,” which is a little bit harsh, even though he really does not like Hyunjin at all.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. Changbin’s a great rapper. Nothing to worry about. You on the other hand…” Hyunjin responds. At this point, the animosity is mutual.

“Both of you are being really annoying.” Changbin says curtly as he tries to wipe his shirt off with a napkin dipped in ice water.

“Babe,” Han can’t keep the whine out of his voice. It pisses him off that the string bean ever had Changbin’s attention. Feels even more pissed off that he had the _nerve_ to reject Changbin. When both separate and distinct veins of distain pull at him from opposite ends, it’s a situation in which he could never actually _like_ Hyunjin, no matter how fine things are between Changbin and Hyunjin now.

Changbin’s anger will fade. Cause as much as Changbin wants him and Hyunjin to be friends, he knows that Changbin also takes guilty pleasure in his own animosity. But right now, he’s got this look on his face. Brows pulled tight, jaw squared. There’s no way in hell Han can step foot on that stage without squashing this beef.

It only gets worse when Minho, Changbin’s friend first, and Jisung’s own fast friend now, sidles up to the table, jams his hand down his back pocket, squeezes his ass, and all but purrs in his ear, “So, you gonna get up there and pass out? Or puke? Because I keep telling Woojin you’re gonna puke and he keeps saying “that’s a horrible thing to say.’”   

Changbin’s gaze burns through his clothes and brands his skin. Like a raided house party, bright red police sirens flash in his mind, and his gut reaction is to scatter.

“Yeah. Uh? Babe? Shouldn’t we like? warm up soon?” They practiced until their throats protested all afternoon, but if he spends one more second at the bar he’s going to scream.

And it feels like a miracle when Changbin steps over to his side.

The moment they’re away from the bar, Jisung threads his fingers into Changbin’s hair and kisses him. Sometimes, it’s the only way he can think to solve a problem. Doesn’t stop until he’s dragged Changbin into the storeroom, stacked high with warm pallets of beer under-utilized cleaning supplies, and a crumbling sofa that the owner absolutely naps on in-between waiting for beer shipments.

“Of course,” Changbin breaks the fervent kiss between them by pushing his balled fists against Han’s chest and pushing him away, but _keeps_ his fingers clenched tight around the straps of his denim overalls. “Of course I’m fucking nervous,” he says in response to Hyunjin’s comment. “I’m nervous, and I’m going to kill Minho.”

There’s more explanation to come, but Jisung interrupts Changbin’s budding tirade to pull him back downward into another bruising kiss. “Baby, I didn’t even notice. I was only looking at you.”  

 Changbin makes a dissatisfied grunt. “This isn’t about Hyunjin being a princess or Minho wanting to fuck anything that moves, especially if I’m interested. This place is packed Han.” It’s true. Neither of them have rapped in front of that many people before. There are people here that didn’t pay the 10,000 won to participate, which is different than some of the other places Changbin has taken him to. In those places there’s an empty space in front of the stage and a long line of wanna be rappers lining the walls, not really listening, just thinking about how to look cool or how not to fuck up when they’re on. 

Jisung kisses him again. This time on the cheek. Chaste, except for the fact that he follows it up with a kiss on the jaw, and a kiss on his neck, over and over again until he’s whimpering.

A confession spills out of Jisung’s mouth, “I’m nervous too.”  He works a hand up Changbin’s shirt, kisses down to his collar bones.

“Why the fuck does it matter?” Changbin’s laugh is acerbic, not with sarcasm, but like he’s come to some jagged realization about reality. “Half the people out there are our friends.” His voice grows more cocksure with each swipe of Han’s tongue across sweat stained skin.

But what he says is the absolute truth. There are people here that actually want to come out and listen to _their_ music. He’s met. Oh god. He’s met _AprilJ_ whose actually this super hot super cool girl that he absolutely wants to be friends with, except she kind of scares him. And _NotBrian_ and his friend and they play guitar.

Jisung pulls up from the mark he’s worried onto Changbin’s collarbone to add, “everyone I’ve met I’ve told to tell the bartender they know me. Everyone’s gonna be so drunk they won’t know if it’s bad.” 

“So what, are we just gonna fuck until we’re not nervous anymore?” Changbin’s voice is equal parts incredulous and mischievous.

“That’s the plan babe.” Jisung croons into his ear before applying pressure to the soft, secret place between the lobe and the shell of his ear, first with his lips and then grazes softly with his teeth. “I can’t go on stage with you if we’re fighting.”

 “Okay,” Changbin shrugs. Changbin looks his body up and down hungrily before melting into his own body, and that’s all he’s wanted since they left the apartment and got onto the train. “I’ve wanted to fuck you in those socks since Japan.”

The way that Changbin says it just grabs him by the dick and tugs. Rough-whine in the way that only Changbin can sound. Because it doesn’t matter if they fucked today already. Doesn’t matter if they’ve already done it in every position. Twice. Like a hunger that’s never sated, he never stops wanting Changbin.

His only regret is that he hasn’t worn the socks until now, but like, a stunt like this requires an occasion.

So yeah, he planned to walk out on stage in his favorite pair of denim overalls with the cuffs rolled up high past his shins. Floppy school girl socks for everyone who was anyone in Seoul to see, but only for Changbin to appreciate.

“You? Wanted to fuck me?” He’s got two hands full of denim as he cups Changbin’s ass, but if Changbin’s game, he’s game too.   

“Yeah, sure. Why not? You do it all the time, it can’t be that difficult.” Changbin says this while he reaches his hand down the front of his overalls and jams his hands down his underwear.

“Try anything twice?” Jisung’s already undoing Changbin’s belt buckle.

“I do give the best advice. Don’t I Han?” Changbin pulls them both down onto the sofa, which protests against their combined weight. Pops the straps on his overalls with a _Clink-pop._ “Do you think you can handle it?”

“Well, you’re not very big—Ugh Changbin!” Not a good _ugh._ Bad _ugh._ Boyfriend pinching his hip bone _ugh._

“I’m big in the right places.” Changbin flops down longways on the sofa like he’s going to read or watch television.

 Jisung shimmies out of his overalls and underwear. His shirt and socks stay on. Changbin remains mostly clothed, and god it’s hotter than it should be.

“Yeah, and I can handle it.” From one of the pockets of his overalls he procures a small packet of lubricant, the trial sizes that come in giant boxes of condoms. Han offers a condom too, because even if he doesn’t want to use it, they’re due on stage in like what, twenty? Gotta keep it clean. Passes them off to Changbin to do with whatever he wants.

“For fuck’s sake Han, you left your train pass and our sampler at the apartment.”

“It’s called priorities.”

“Turn around,” Changbin playfully swats his ass.

“Oh, so I’m not the only one who’s thought about this.”

Changbin might be about to stick his dick inside of him, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing has changed. Changbin’s gonna be a princess through and through, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. So, he straddles Changbin, backwards of course, so that every wrinkle in his floppy socks are in full view. Wriggles his ass against Changbin’s dick just to remind him that princess that Changbin may be, he _has_ to do something. “C’mon Changbin, fuck me.”

“Hm, be patient. Hyung is giving you a gift. I’ve never been inside of anyone before.” Another smack to his ass, and his skin stings so good.

“You didn’t even know that you wanted this until—” A splash of wet against his hole, and Changbin’s guiding him down onto his cock.

_Fuck._

It’s not fair to compare, but it’s all that he knows, and he knows that Changbin’s not like Chan at all. Chan made him wait, Chan made him beg for it. With Changbin, its not like that and he wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s how Jisung wants him, fast, and rough, and reckless, all just to hide the tenderness barely hidden beneath the surface.

Changbin’s cock feels thick, and he feels _so_ full, and nothing is really important right now. Not the crowd, or the future, or his past, just the pressure where they’re joined and the pressure of Changbin’s fingertips digging into his hips. “Do I feel good baby?”

“Yeah,” Changbin’s voice is breathy. He rolls his hips up into Han in uneven strokes that _threaten_ to drive him crazy, but are too disjointed and chaotic to send him over the edge.

It’s kind of amazing that they can do what they always do, and what always works for them, just completely different.  “Gonna look so fucking pretty up there. Sex hair. Glowing on stage, cause I’m your man and I’m right there with you.” His legs burn from balancing on top of Changbin. His ears burn from the amazing, intimate sensation of Changbin buried deep inside of him.

Changbin plays with his socks as they fitfully grind against one another. Rubbing his thumb across the arch of his feet and tugging at the folds in his socks.   

The solid, oppressive weight of fear melts off of his chest, drips down his ribcage, and pools at the base of his spine, transformed into desperate, molten tension as Changbin fucks into him.

Anxiety, edged out by the wild, desperate need to cum, he can only hope that Changbin feels the same way. He’s certain, well, fairly certain, that Changbin feels the same way when he cums but keeps jacking him off until his cock his soft.

* * *

Things have kind of sucked lately, but he feels so fucking happy. Like right now, he can’t keep the big stupid grin off his face. It crawled into his expression the _second_ he and Changbin caught each other’s’ gaze on stage. Grew wider somehow when Changbin pressed his back to his own, leaned up against him, and started popping off on the mic. Grew so wide that it became too big for his face, so now his face feels sore.

In this moment, it feels like they’re ten feet tall and growing, going to bust through the roof of the underground club and up into the city above. Like he can breathe fire, and Changbin can breathe ice and together they’re unstoppable. He comes up with lines on the fly and Changbin punctuates them perfectly. There’s no saving good set ups for themselves, just moving forward.

Pressure lessens on his back, and Jisung whips around. Changbin is _right_ there. His sweat-slicked forehead slides against Changbin’s, and he gets swallowed up by Changbin’s wide, wild, stage-crazy eyes. Their microphones bump against one another. Everything feels wet, his spit, Changbin’s spit, body and visceral.

Stiflingly intimate. Like they’re fucking.

What’s worse? Being ignorant of how bad things suck? Or knowing and actually trying to make it better? Changbin makes him want to be better.

There’s no one else he’d rather try to be better around. Unlike anyone else he’s around, Changbin’s pages are fresh and unwritten too, and together they spill ink across them in an attempt to write something beautiful.

Changbin spends his student stipend at the beginning of the month on albums and music equipment. Changbin picks up odd jobs like fliering for new restaurants that open in the neighborhood, and dumps the papers in the trash. Changbin doesn't know how to cook or write a check and holy fuck that's the most comforting feeling in the whole wide world because he knows that he’s not alone.

The verse ends, but he and Changbin remain stock still on stage. Their foreheads still pressed together, hands wrapped around the backs of their necks, their palms damp with one another’s sweat. Ragged, desperate panting noises are amplified over the PA system.

This is it.

Like Jisung thought he knew in the past when Rania came to bed in nothing but heels and a fur coat

Thought that he knew when he met that drunk girl who fed him French fries outside of a venue at three in the morning, but god he was wrong.

For the first time in a long time if feels so fucking good to be wrong.

It’s fucking real.

So, he leans to the left, and mouths it into Changbin’s ear in front of everyone, and heard by no one else. “Love you Changbin”

* * *

 

_November 4 th, 1998_

“What are you doing Mr. Bang?”

Chan whips around in office chair, which is exactly how people with nothing to hide behave. “A project?” what happens when you die? Why isn’t he married? Is time real, or something just measured with a clock? He lies to these kids at least a hundred times a day, what’s one more.

“For lessons?” In the doorframe, Kazue picks at the dry skin under his nose. “

“Yeah, for lessons.”

Chan, deemed too boring by his student, is left in peace with a head nod in place of a proper bow, “Oh. Bye Mr. Bang,” and the thunder of shoes slapping down the hallway. 

Crisp autumnal air flows in from the open windows of the teachers’ shared office, and drapes itself around Chan’s shoulders, like an extra, opposing layer to his pullover sweater. A particularly strong gust blows in, mussing his perfectly collated stacks of paper.

“Ah, no.” So, he begins again, assembling individual packet. Job description, resume, cover letter, envelope, and sets them in a long row upon his desk, until the row becomes too long, and everything spills over to Mrs. Ito’s.

What does it mean to feel lost when you know every road, and alleyway, and footpath by memory? If you walked a path that seemed so clear and committed to memory with bare feet only to find that large windows with glimpses of the future had been shattered upon it, would you still walk down it to capture glimpses of what could be in those shards? If vines of opportunity, thick mossy green and rough bark brown, branched outward and covered that path, would you reach up, grab them, and take a new path?

He never really knew where he was going after the island. Maybe Tokyo, maybe China, because he’s never been there before, maybe the Korea towns in LA or New York. No matter where was next, he made sure that he had _nothing_ to tie him to Seoul. That is, until Chan shed one anchor for two.

Chan would ask if it were alright to change the course of your life based upon one night, but the people he’d ask already have the answer.

It would be foolish to not listen to their advice.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was very difficult for me to write. I fought with it quite a bit. Can you sense it? The end of our heroes' journey is near. There is a playlist for this fic with all the songs inspiring the chapter titles, and some period appropriate jrock. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRCEVpO1IJ7rnX7iqi0jaKD27lj5drC2h


	8. Runners High

_ March 24th, 1999  _

“Alright, listen. I don’t think  _ you  _ understand. I have cash,” and to reiterate his statement, Changbin pulls a wad of crumpled 10,000 won bills from his pocket. 

Changbin stands near the skate shop counter at the place where the divider abruptly ends, but the metaphorical boundary extends. It’s meant to keep patrons away from merchandise behind the shelf and the register, but he’s a man on a mission. 

When he crosses this metaphorical line, the clerk steps towards Changbin. This makes Changbin take a nervous half step back away from the counter, but don’t confuse it with surrender.  

“Like I don’t know what you want me to say dude, he has these on layaway fair and square,” the clerk seems sympathetic to his position, but it’s fading fast with Changbin’s repeated insistence. 

“Okay, but you don’t understand. My b-my friend is coming home from a year abroad and my other friend and I really want to surprise him. And we have matching pairs.” Inline skates in Grapeasaurus Rex purple, Han bought them for White Day. 

Chan’s pair isn’t an afterthought, they just didn’t have the money at the time. 

A few weeks later, the shop has Out of This World Orange and Key Lime Scream, but they’ve  _ got  _ to match, and the only remaining purple pair of size tens is tucked back behind the counter on layaway. The employees might have a shred of dignity, but the owner is scuzzy and Changbin  _ knows  _ that he’s close to sealing the deal. “What if I gave you an extra fifteen thousand?” The previous offer, a lowball, cash in full. 

But in that moment he’s interrupted by the high pitched interruption of his pager. A Christmas gift from his parents, it serves as a Han Jisung transmitter and decoder. Scrambling for the device in his pocket, he immediately recognizes string of numbers not as contact information, but he and Han’s secret language. 

_ 47119  _

Route 47 (route to the skate park), emergency service number 119 (aka HELP ME!). 

Fuck. 

Alright so it’s like this. Han needs him, but he’s also a changed man now. He seals the deal, and doesn’t run away, and if Han were really truly dying his pager would be blowing up right now with dozen or more other calls. 

Changbin extracts every single crumpled bill from his wallet and his pocket. “Okay, I’ll give you like fifty thousand more. Cash.” Chan is fucking worth it, and half of it’s Han’s money anyway. 

“Fine,” the owner responds. 

What did Changbin say? Scuzzy. 

Box of inline skates tucked up under his arm, Changbin darts toward the skatepark hoping that if Han needs to go to the hospital, he has enough for their train fare. 

* * *

 

“Hey butt dart!” Jisung calls out from the top of the quarter pipe demanding Hyunjin’s attention. “Watch this.” Changbin isn’t here to yell at them for fighting, and so they do it freely now. Hyunjin coyly flashes his middle finger, as if he were waving at Jisung playfully across the court.  

Fucker. 

Jisung kicks the teal colored penny board upward, drops it back down, and kicks off. Gaining momentum he flies down the quarter pipe, across the concrete, back up the second quarter pipe. Wind glides through his hair and makes the tip of his nose feel cold in the overcast sky of late spring. 

Returning to the first quarter pipe, and completing the circuit, he rolls upward and maneuvers into a half cab rock fakie that he’s spent  _ days  _ practicing relentlessly for two purposes. First, impress Changbin. Second, piss off Hyunjin because he  _ knows  _ the other boy has been trying to perfect it for months now. 

Except something gets fucked on the pivot, and he rolls his ankle over the board. Like an insect on the windshield he  _ splats  _ against the ramp and slides pitifully down the ramp. 

Dull yet persistent ache in his ankle, something tells him that this is probably more than just a pulled muscle. 

Fuck. 

_ March 26th, 1999  _

“I like your bike Mr. Bang.” Chan looks over to see Eito, one of three students in “second” grade, soon to be one of two students in “third” grade at the school...Eito’s classmate, Hiroto, is moving  to Fukuoka, and so the minute class dwindles still. 

“Do you want it?” Although he’s burdened with luggage strapped to the fender and in the oversized basket, he can walk the rest of the way from the convenience store to the ferry station. And because he didn’t have the foresight to sell the bike, or give it away, his plan had been to leave it at the station and wait for time and nature to reclaim the bike. Rust the frame and rot the tires, because there’s absolutely no way that someone would take it. 

Eyes wide, jaw dropped in wonder, “wait? Really?” 

“Yeah, I’m leaving Japan for awhile because I need to go back home.”   


“Do you have to?” 

“Yeah, I kind of do.” Chan continues. “Here, we can trade. The bike for….” His voice trails off for a moment. “A piece of candy?” 

“Deal,” and ever a man of his word, Eito gives him a handful of chocolate mushrooms. Chan adjusts the seat for him, and puts his grocery sack filled with candy into the front basket. 

Standing upon the embankment where the road ends abruptly into the water and waits patiently for the red and white sun-faded Japan Rail ferry, Chan watches as the boat determinedly chugs closer and closer towards the island shore. Turning his head, he watches as Eito determinedly pedals a powder blue Schwinn bicycle up an incline. 

He’s going back to Seoul. A place that he might be from someday. 

* * *

 

The digital clock at the station platform reads 16:42. The train is scheduled to depart at 16:42. He knows this because he checked the time table. Twice. Despite this lack of discrepancy, the train pulls out of the station without the minute hand’s permission to roll forward. Chan’s desperate run slows to a trot, and then slower, defeated steps. 

Seoul moves quickly. 

It’s something he’s forgotten after a year of island time, but another seven minutes when he’s already gone nine months seems like forever. 

He’s so confident in his ability to speak the language and hide the accent this time around. At the transfer station, he doesn’t need to stop and ask for directions, and when he sees the city through the train car windows, he doesn’t look upon the city with wide, neon star filled eyes, but instead a comfortable familiarity. 

But none of this prevents him from feeling lost. 

Chan does what one always tends to do when they feel lost. Retrace his steps, not through the city streets but through the compact, serpentine pathways of his past. 

Many of those pathways lead to one common center. BamBam. Chan still thinks about him sometimes.  Not often, but sometimes. When he sees a rare post of his on any of the emerging Korean music boards on Usenet. When he spread out his futon upon the tatami covered floor at night, Chan thought of him. The sands of time have rounded out the edge to Chan’s emotion. No longer does he fixate on only the very best or very worst. Instead, he pulls from the back of his mind neutral thoughts that rehumanize. He thinks of way that he used to gather up all of the cats and toss them playfully onto the mattress before bed time. They never all stayed, but he'd try. He thinks of the way that he'd always save the best bite of food for last: the middle of cinnamon rolls and the most charred pieces of meat.  

Chan, perhaps misguidedly, thinks of him when he sees the two of them together as he crossed through the turnstile and sees them standing together. Han holds onto Changbin, with his arm around Changbin's thin waist. Changbin fiddles with a pink discman CD player, one clip on headphone hovering over his ear. The other earphone hovers over Han’s ear. 

Chan thinks of him now that he knows how it feels to know that his boyfriend (pick one) is out there, an ocean away, sleeping with someone else. 

They look good together. Complete. Chan supposes they should. After all, they’ve had almost a year to get to know one another. To disagree and clarify. Share, and grow, and let love in it’s nebulous form become more tangbible, albeit amorphous, filling in the cracks and spaces between their flaws and their strengths binding them together. 

If he’s going to make it with Changbin and Han, he has to move quickly. Ignore the burn in his heart and move forward without warmup to catch up in a marathon.

Chan bolts through the turnstile. “Hey!” The strap of his overstuffed backpack gets stuck on the metal arm of the turnstile and yanks him backwards before he can even properly move forward. 

Changbin and Han turn their attention toward him at just the right time, and watch him get yanked back into the pronged metallic turnstyle. Excitement shifts radically to concern as they race to his side. 

Changbin darts toward him, gains momentum, and doesn’t really know how to stop when he reaches the turn style. So, he too crashes into Chan in a half fall half embrace. 

So it’s only natural that Han drapes himself across the other two, his impish voice cutting through the laughter, “Chan, you found us!” 

_ April 1st, 1999  _

“Sorry, this probably isn’t your idea of a romantic date.” 

“What, freezing my dick off?” Changbin can’t remember the last time that it snowed in April. Seoul gets plenty cold, but winter never seems to overstay her welcome. But that afternoon they’d left the apartment in thick sweaters and beanies, no coat or gloves. Now that the sun has set upon the city, winter makes a brief return to collect something forgotten. Dry flakes of snow drift from the sky and remind him of the powdered detergent his mother used to use to wash his clothes. 

Can’t feel his fingers, the tips of his noes, or his toes in thin canvas shoes, and if he thinks about how long the train ride is back to the apartment, it has all the makings of a very miserable evening. “Chan, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” 

“I mean, I know you hate the cold.” Chan signals for quiet, and then  _ action.  _

Changbin turns on the tape recorder and dutifully records the sound of Chan sinking 100 won coins into a soda machine. And when the last coin in Chan’s hand is deposited, “I’m more concerned you’re going to spend our train fare.” Because 50 won coins make the best sound, light  _ clinks,  _ but Chan is a perfectionist, and who knows if and when they will need the heavier  _ glug-clunk  _ sound of the 100 won coin. 

“Don’t worry,” Chan takes the recorder from him and jams rewind. He holds the recorder up to his ear for a moment and plays back the sound of the Coke machine devouring coins. “I think I’ve got it.” 

“What’s next?” 

“Seriously?” Chan looks excited, like he’s finally allowing himself to go through the long list of prospective recordings they could make tonight in his mind. 

“Chan I’ve been banned from message boards for asking for recordings. I’ve been asked to leave stores for making recordings.” And the fact that there’s a person out there just as particular about his  _ glugs _ and his  _ clinks  _ and his  _ thwunks  _ as he is makes him smile like a fucking moron. “Whatever you need let’s fucking get it.” 

“I want the weird sticky sound that the door to the cooler makes when you open it at 7-11. I want the sound of the train. The tracks. I have this idea. For the...You know--” 

He does. “BitchTrain?” It’s a work in progress that Chan’s been tinkering with for over a week now. Something with three dozen iterations behind him, and at least a dozen more to go. 

“Yeah,” Chan’s mouth turns upward into a smile. “BitchTrain.” 

“Let’s fucking go.” Changbin grabs Chan’s hand and pulls him left. “I think I saw a corner store this way.” 

Silence wraps around their shoulders, becoming the coats they’d intentionally left behind at home. So cold outside, he can see their breaths vaporize and mingle in a cloud in front of them as they walk through an alleyway and down the city street. 

“What time is it?” 

“Eight-forty,” Chan responds with a cursory glance at his watch. “Plenty of time before we have to go.” They’re meeting Han while he's at work tonight. “Ah, I still can’t believe it.” 

“What’s so difficult to believe? That our Han,” Sometimes he feels like they’re an old married couple, he and Chan. When there isn’t anything else to talk about, there’s always Han. The way that they talk about Han and how proud of him they are, and how they’ve taught him little things like how to fold a shirt and how to fry an egg, Chan makes an amazing dad, and he a beautiful trophy wife who would burn water on the stove if given the opportunity.  “Was paid three hundred thousand won to assemble a guest list of well known users on the Korean music boards, that lived in Korea, and invite them to this club?” 

He’s impressive. He’ll make in one weekend enough to pay the rent at Changbin’s studio, but stumble back to said studio four or five in the morning and act like it’s a palace nonetheless. 

“Sure, that,” there’s pressure on Changbin’s hand now as Chan squeezes with affection and reassurance. 

Suddenly, Changbin feels the fire of Chan’s gaze against his skin and it melts away the spring snow before it can even touch upon his skin. 

“Or that, I’m just gonna go out tonight. On a Friday, and it’s like any other Friday, to club with you guys. Or that you’re my boyfriends. Or,” Chan’s voice trails off. Silence returns again and in that silence, the heat of Chan’s gaze is intensified. Like if he keeps talking, if he diverts a single shred of his attention elsewhere, he’ll miss something about capturing Changbin is the way that he exists right here and now. 

Changbin finds it unnerving just as much as he loves the meticulous attention. 

Chan’s voice is soft, “that I’m running around Seoul with  _ you.  _ Seo Changbin,” and punctuates the sentence with a kiss soft on Changbin’s mouth. A full name and a reference to a second version of him. A version of him that's smart and competent and confident. A version that he can sometimes summon into real life. So long as CB77 or J.One are nearby. “Before last summer, we talked so much that it was like my heart hurt because I knew so much about you, but in some ways I didn’t really know you at all.”

Now its Changbin's turn to warm Chan with his gaze. Let him cook under the pressure as Changbin remains dead silent as Chan opens and closes, opens and closes the door to the frozen food items until the clerk glares at them through the corner mirror. 

"Do we know each other now?" Changbin isn’t trying to pick a fight. He and Han fit together so well. And even when Han and Chan are at a loss for words with one another, at the very least they have the memory and the intimacy of a few sacred weeks together in Japan. 

"I know that you like your egg yolks cooked all the way through. And I know that I want to judge you for it. I know that you can't sleep at night unless you're cuddling. Me. Or Han. And I never knew that I'd feel retroactively jealous of a pillow."

"I used to be jealous of him." Changbin's face flushes hot. Although what he says is the truth it was something that was never supposed to be told to Chan out loud. But he keeps fucking talking.  "Like on the rare chance he posted and you'd always respond, or on a Saturday afternoon we'd talk til it was time to go out but you'd mention havin' to call him international. Is that fucked up?" But he already knows the answer. "That I was jealous of a guy that I never even met over a guy that I never even met?"

"Seriously?" Suddenly, Chan finds the sight of the snow-sludge stained floor immensely interesting.

"I don't know. Like after you offered to have sex with me without seeing my face, it was like something clicked. Like it wasn’t all in my head felt so good, and you know I haven’t really questioned it much since. Whatever it is just fucking works.”

“Oh, so you’re saying I’m easy now,” Chan will feel guilty if he doesn’t buy something. They’ve gone through this before when they wanted to get a source recording of a cash register drawer. So he’s looming in the beef jerky section trying to make a selection. 

Changbin, being a man of action, and only a few thousand won in his wallet, selects a bottle of soju from the liquor shelf. No need to spend all his money on overpriced cocktails later tonight. “No, what I’m saying is that I love Han."

“Aw you love your boyfriend.” 

“But sometimes I feel like I gotta be a better person than I actually am to set an example, and when you’re around I don’t feel like I have to do that so much. Sometimes he makes me feel crazy, because like, I get why he gets upset sometimes, but I also do  _ not  _ get why he gets upset about some of the stuff that he does.” 

“Like me moving in?” At the register, Chan pays for everything. 

Sometimes it’s nice having two employed boyfriends. Other times, when doubt tugs at his stomach and makes him wonder if he’s spent the past year in stagnation. This is one of them. When he compares what’s changed for him in the past year versus what’s changed for Chan and Han it feels like mountains versus pebbles. 

“Yeah, cause he stays over a lot and has a key, but doesn’t actually live there. And you do.” 

“I can understand that. But I’ll save up enough to get my own place, and it won’t be like that.” 

Changbin twists his expression in disapproval. He doesn’t want that either. 

“All I know is that...Well, we’ve never discussed it , but I’ve always felt like it’s all or nothing. Either the three of us want to be together, or none of us can be together. Maybe I’m wrong. But when you weren’t here I told myself when things were hard with Han, I had to make it work. Not only because he was worth it, but also because it was absolutely going to be worth seeing you again. I,” Changbin’s voice lowers. The quietness only makes his voice sound rougher. “Needed to see you again.” 

Chan holds the door open for him as they duck back out in the cold. The snowflakes have grown in size and morphed into heavy wet crystals that catch in their  long eyelashes. “You’re being really sweet.” Chan holds onto his arm, so close that he can feel his warm misted breath against the shell of his ear. Chan’s just like that, always  _ pushing  _ the boundary of what they could get away with in public. “You must want something from me.” 

“Like what, you already bought me booze and snacks.” a dry response conceals Changbin’s hope. 

“I mean like,” Chan’s voice shifts from buttery smooth to nervous laughter. “Like you wanna fuck. I mean, we haven’t yet. Just the two of us.” 

Like he needs a fucking reminder. 

“Can, uh, BitchTrain wait?” Changbin smiles at him. 

“BitchTrain can wait,” Chan reassures.

* * *

 

The signs that they’ve outgrown Changbin’s apartment are numerous; he and Chan crowd one another on a bed that’s clearly meant for one person. Chan, despite his best efforts to keep his things organized and neat, has occupied a large portion of the room with synthesizers, either mailed here from across the globe or extracted from storage. 

Han’s weekend bag sits on the floor to the left against the wall. Shirts, and CD jewel cases spill out onto the floor. 

Changbin, completely unfazed, doesn’t even stop kissing Chan as he shoves a small mountain of books, some for class and some for fun, onto the floor before burrowing between the covers with him. 

Desperate for each other, and desperate for any spark of warmth that the other can provide, icy cold hands skim underneath their oversized sweaters in search of warmth and smooth swathes of skin. 

Permission granted in lust and revoked just as quickly in the shock of the cold, “Chan, fuck off your hands are so cold.” 

Pop the button on Changbin’s jeans and push them down past their ankles. 

“Warm me up then.” In that moment, he isn’t sure what he enjoys more, Changbin’s whines of protest as Chan splays hands wide on the warm flesh of his thighs, or the way those very whines melt into soft moans as they kiss roughly, deeply with cold chapped lips and bump frost-red noses. 

“Chan,” Changbin pouts, but soon has his way making short work of Chan’s pants and disappearing underneath the blanket under which they both fumble. Heater turned off in anticipation of spring, the air is much too cold to linger in for long. Sweaters stay on while pants and underwear are discarded. 

Warmth, impossible velvet and tight, embraces his cock. Changbin hums around him with a contented sigh, and Chan is apt to agree, rolling onto his back and propping himself upon his elbows. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, you’ve gotten so much better at this.” 

Changbin moves his tongue across the underside of his cock before pulling off with a viscous _pop._ Peeking up at Chan from underneath the pale blue blanket upon the bed, Changbin’s lips shine with saliva as he smiles at Chan and purrs at him, “practice,” before swallowing him back down, tracing the underside of his cock and lavishing attention at the ridge. 

Jarring, if not mesmerizing, the way that Changbin holds his hips hard enough to leave soft purple pink bruises on the flesh, but takes him into his mouth gently and completely, Chan’s cock never once grazing against teeth, only pressing against plush lips and pink tongue and the forbidden, soft inner skin of his cheeks. 

He’s so close, and he doesn’t want to tell Changbin to stop, but he knows. Knows what it is that they both want, “Changbin--stop.” 

Although he was on the precipice of cumming moments ago, Chan takes it slow like they’ve got all the time in the world. Takes Changbin apart knuckle by knuckle and watches him writhe on the sheets.  

“Stop teasing me,” Changbin can’t even throw back a blunted insult. “Chan please.” 

“Stop?” he questions, pulling the two fingers he’s worked inside of Changbin out partially, just to the first knuckle, but not all the way. “Why baby? What’s the matter?” Maybe it’s because he likes to make Changbin feel good. Maybe it’s because he wants to test the limits of what it means to be Changbin’s  _ easy. _

“You know that’s not what the hell I mean Chan.” Changbin’s furtive struggle only makes him tighten around his fingers, only pushes Chan out more, and drags Changbin away from the pleasure that he so badly wants. 

“But you’re so tight.” His tone is dead serious. In contrast, he can’t stop his mouth from curling into a smirk as he drags another lube coated finger against Changbin’s rim. 

When his finger is inside, “Chan I’m gonna cum,” Changbin’s voice is pitchy not with entitlement now, but with genuine desperation. 

Chan wants this. Wants the easy fuck he was promised over a year ago with a virgin in Japan who pushed almost everyone away except for him. And he knows that he’s never gonna really get it now. Too many feelings. Too much experience. But he’ll chase after easy no matter how hard it becomes. So, he pulls his fingers out one by one and greedily devours each sullen moan that slides from Changbin’s lips. 

Changbin laying on his side, Chan pushes him down onto his stomach. 

“Uh-uh,” and then Changbin’s turning back over. “Wanna kiss you.” 

Yeah. Easy. 

He just wants to make Changbin happy. So he pushes Changbin’s legs up to his stomach and pushes in nice and slow. When he’s buried to the hilt in all of Changbin’s warmth and wet, seals them together, as requested with a kiss.

Changbin hooks his leg up over his shoulders which means that Chan is afforded the privilege of kissing his curled toes when they shift positions. Pinched tight eyes and pouting mouth, it’s clear that Changbin isn’t going to last very long.

Between his legs feels so heavy and that weight pulls his body taut. Wild uneven strokes and a temporary inability to put Changbin’s pleasure first, it’s no surprise when he doesn’t last long. It’s a relief when Changbin paints their stomachs in thick white cum from only the simplest of touches to the head of his cock. So sensitive and so responsive. 

Earlier, Changbin asked if they truly knew each other at all; his concern isn’t unwarranted. Chan can tell how close Changbin and Han are there are times when he feels like he doesn’t even know Changbin at all. Like when he puts on Chopin on cassette to study and when he asks Chan to go to the bar with him on Sunday afternoons to watch baseball. But for what it’s worth, he knows and loves just how pliant Changbin gets after sex. He anticipates way that Changbin drapes his body over his in equal parts possessiveness and desperate yearning for attention. He knows what Changbin is going to tell him with half-lidded eyes and bed head before he even says it.  

He knows, but it’s still so nice to hear from Changbin’s voice through his very own ears. Nice to see the way his mouth curls into a smile and his cheeks grow red as he tries to tear into the package of beef jerky.  “I love you.” 

* * *

 

Changbin has an obscene purple red mark on his neck, not at the crook, but higher up just inches below his earlobe. He wears it out onto the stage like a badge of honor. Just seeing him on stage makes his face flush red, as if everyone in the club knows what they did. 

Han spies them while he’s frantically running cases of beer to the back bar. Stopping dead in his tracks he looks Changbin up and down hungrily before flashing Chan the biggest, brightest smile and obstinate thumbs up. 

So if he told either of his partners right now that he feels like a voyeur in his own relationship, specifically when he watches Changbin and Chan together, his boyfriends would probably think he’s crazy. 

But Changbin and Han consume all five senses plus the ones that people don’t have names for yet.  _ Touch,  _ they can’t keep their hands off of one another. On stage Changbin presses his hand to Han’s chest mid verse. He can’t be certain if he’s ever  _ seen _ two people look so good together. Never  _ heard  _ such synchrony on the stage. Knows that Changbin is going to taste and smell like Han’s orange soda because he takes long draught after draught between verses as he wilts upon the stage. 

He knows, absolutely knows that he could join them up on stage now. Stage fright isn’t the issue. A weight obtuse and unidentifiable, not quite jealousy, not quite inadequacy, keeps him bolted into place.

Han and Changbin race ahead into the bridge and final verse.  

_ July 18th, 1999  _

“You know what this reminds me of?” They like, gotta know. One year. One whole fucking goddamn year. Four seasons, twelve months, fifty-two weeks and three hundred and sixty-five days. 

He hasn’t thought about her in forever. Doesn’t have to worry about what she’s doing now, or if she ever moved into a new apartment uptown, and he fully intends to keep it that way. But he was with her for four months, and that’s the longest he’d ever been with anyone up until then. Three times longer, just like three of them. 

And he really wants to just tell them every single sentimental thought that races through his mind, but damn. What’s a keynote speaker without a damn good introduction? 

So he whips around on his roller skates and gets into Chan’s face. Looping an arm around Chan’s neck, he holds onto him and makes Chan push him down the foot bridge. Chan responds as soon as he’s steadied himself. “Damn it Han,” and then, “Osaka,” as he places  his hands on his hips and pushes backward. 

The city, a restless pupa in the world’s garden has slept restlessly in its cocoon, and emerged a Mothra sized problem ready to eat it’s own tail. Riverside parks fade out into harsh embankments buzzing freeway overpasses. 

So they spend the day in-line skates strapped to their feet, skating back and forth the river foot path, along the bankside bike trail, and launching themselves over the concrete steps and curbs that interrupt. Back and forth and back and forth. 

“It’s like, our first anniversary.” Alright here it is, time to bring the romance.  

Changbin inserts himself into the conversation and into their closeness. Latching onto Chan’s back, he pushes the ever unsteady mass of legs and skates. “Is it? Must be close,” Changbin responds. 

“No. It's actually, for real, our one year anniversary. Look.” Han pushes out of the skate chain sending Changbin and Chan reeling backwards and scrambling to regain their balance. Ooops.  He should really stop wearing these overalls because they have too many pockets. First he checks the chest pocket, then the left hip pocket, then the right, before extracting his wallet from his back left pocket.  Library card. No. Crumpled receipt with a producer’s disconnected phone number. No. “Ah-a!” More precious than large bills, he extracts a crumpled concert ticket, water stained and ink spattered with last July’s impatient rain.  

“Sap,” Changbin’s words are truthful, and he’ll wear them like a badge of honor and never an insult. 

“We should do something special.” He’s planned something special. “Like I don’t know.” He does know. He so fucking knows. So he extracts a cherry red colored gym lock, thank you discount store, from one of his many overall pockets and waves it in front of Changbin and Chan. “Go to the most romantic spot in Seoul and pretend we’re in a movie?” 

He watches Chan’s expression morph into a quiet smile, and Changbin smirk with faux disgust. God he’s so nailing this best boyfriend ever thing. 

* * *

 

“Let me,” Changbin grabs the sharpie marker from him. “I don’t know if it will work if our initials are illegible.” 

“Whatever you want baby,” Han hands over the lock to Changbin, who writes their initials down the long edge of the lock. 

It’s like this thing in Seoul. Go to the tower, lock a lock in a nest of thousands of other locks along the fence and wish and hope you’ll be together forever. He can remember seeing it on TV. He can remember thinking about how he was going to use this very move on the prettiest girl in his class whenever he got to high school, when he would obviously be more handsome. 

He’s so fucking glad that real life is better than fantasy. Not to mention, they need all the help that they can get. 

It’s hard enough for two people to work out, so where does that leave them? When everything is so uncertain, the only thing that can hold it all into place is a single lock and a prayer. 

They all look stupid right now in sock feet, skates tied in multicolored straps and hung over their backs, but he’s never felt cooler. 

“Chan should do the honors then,” Changbin supplies. 

“I agree.” 

“Alright then.” Chan accepts the lock and selects a spot near the top of the gridded row of locks. 

“Not there!” 

“Here then?” Chan moves automatically. 

“Yeah.” 

Closing the lock shut, Chan throws the key over the terrace and into the city below. 

Yeah, he totally nailed this whole,  _ best boyfriend ever _ thing. Like, totally. Know how he knows? 

Cause Chan didn’t even remember to pull down all the futons and blankets and shit in the closet before he pushed him down onto his knees and started fucking him open with his fingers. Cause Changbin lays on the carpeted floor in front of him with his knees tucked to his chest and fingers himself open right in front of him. 

Totally worth getting carpet burn for on his shins for this. 

Changbin rolls over onto his knees at the exact same time that Chan pulls his fingers out and pushes his cock in, and it’s absolutely terrifying the way that Changbin and Chan can just... _ Do that  _ without so much as a word exchanged between them. 

But they do. 

When his brain short circuits from taking Chan’s dick, Chan reaches around front, grabs his cock, and guides him into Changbin’s hole. 

Holy fuck. 

That’s like. The hottest thing ever. 

They haven’t even started yet and he feels like he’s gonna pop. And if he pops now, he’s gonna die of embarrassment because god this is all that he  _ ever  _ wanted holy fuck. Changbin feels so fucking tight on his dick right now. Like it didn’t even matter that he fucked him in the shower this morning. 

He can feel Chan’s dick twitch inside of him, and his breath hot in his ear. It feels so good, but oh god that isn’t helping him not fucking bust. Not at all. 

But Chan husks into his ear nonetheless, “relax Han,” which is easier said than done when Chan’s playing with his nipple. Then, “do you really think we didn’t know it was today.” 

Changbin looks back at him over his shoulder lips in full, unapologetic pout. “Remember? Remember telling me how bad you wanted to do this?” 

Without speaking, Changbin and Chan decide once again without speaking. Chan pulls out so that only the tip of his cock catches his rim. Changbin pulls off of his cock. 

Together they sink back down onto him in a single synchronous motion.

Alright. 

Fucking fine. 

He’ll admit it. 

Maybe the title of best boyfriend ever is in contention. 

_ September 17th, 1998  _

“It isn’t much, but um…” It’s better than the three of them cramming into one studio apartment, barely big enough for one person, for days at a time. Chan hears the  _ click  _ of the tumbler in the lock, pushes the door open, and steps away so that Han and Changbin can step inside. 

“Oh my god, it’s so fucking big.” Changbin walks into the front room with his arms spread wide, jaw slack with shock. 

Han runs into the front room, down the shallow hallway and into the first and second bedrooms. It’s just as good as an agreement. “Oh my god, you have so much space here.” 

“Well um, that’s the thing.” Much like hypercolor shirts and cassettes, in the city, single family houses are going out of style quickly. People want to live in newer apartment buildings with appliances from this decade, and no leaks in the roof. 

Chan has no doubt that this little single family home, in a neighborhood that no one wants to live because its too close to the expats, and too close to rowdy bars, will get bulldozed within the next five years. For now, it’s theirs. “I  _ can  _ pay the rent here. It’s not that bad. But,” Why is he nervous? They basically turned Changbin’s apartment into a flop house, and sort of live together now. Why does the molding suddenly look excruciatingly interesting? 

“You know. A place like this isn’t meant for one person. If you wanted a change of scenery from your parents house and your shoe box. I mean apartment. You could…” 

“Hell yeah.” 

“Let’s go start grabbing stuff out of my apartment all our shit is there anyway.” 

_ October 3rd, 1998  _

“Ah, I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Chan’s got that look of subdued panic upon his face that he seems to have whenever he and Han agree on something the first time around. “But this isn’t exactly what I had in mind.” 

“Don’t worry Chan, we’ll be really gentle.” He doesn’t know for sure, but based on what he’s heard Chan’s parents are probably the kind of people that took him to a nice shiny place in the mall to get his ears done. His own mother dragged him to the pediatrician for antibiotics when he came back from a party with two uneven studs in his ear. “And we have ice.” A Styrofoam cup from the 7-11 filled to the brim with ice is far more than he had when he was at the party. 

“You said you wanted more...I mean unless you don’t want to,” Han isn’t as pushy as he is. Good cop bad cop. But in hand he holds the five thousand won two pack of earrings from the discount store along with Chan’s sewing kit. Han can’t find his own sneakers most mornings, but he was able to extract this from Chan’s shelf without thinking twice about its location. Pink and purple sparkling hearts, matching piercings, he can’t think of anything better to do for Chan’s birthday. 

If Chan agrees, deciding who gets the pink earrings and who gets the purple is another battle entirely. 

He kind of figured that trying to share a bed together would end most nights in blankets on the floor. Learned really quickly that in arguments, if they weren’t careful, it would be really, really careful for two to side against the other. But he could’ve never expected all the little things. Like how to split a plate of dumplings served in plates of eight and ten. The world was made for even numbers, and favored two more than most. 

“Okay, okay, okay,” Chan finally agrees. “But you have to be careful.” 

“What, I’m sure Han washed his hands sometime this week.” 

“You mean you don’t want Changbin to do it? He’s had like three iced coffees today. I’m sure his hands are super steady.” 

They sit on a bed that’s actually two normal sized beds pushed together, but is  _ still  _ too small for the three of them. Changbin and Han work with a quickness and efficiency not often seen off stage, offering ice, and a sewing needle hastily sterilized with a holographic blue bic lighter. 

“What color you want Birthday Boy?” 

Chan looks up at Changbin from his bent over crooked position. He holds a cube of ice against the lobe of his left ear. “Pink.” 

“Alright,” and Changbin does his best to extract the earring from the card stock without touching the stem. “Han?” might as well, because he’s already got his fingers lodged into the cup of ice. 

“Purple I guess.” 

“You sure?” 

“Well pink is like, your favorite.” 

“Yeah, that’s why I think it would be cool if you both had pink ones,” Changbin supplies.  

“Okay.” 

* * *

__

Changbin and Han have changed him in so many ways, that if he had to sit down and list them, he’d stare at the page and the pen in his hand, words of gratitude and love swirling about his brain while he was unable to commit anything to paper. 

But this is tangible. He can remember the cold feeling of ice against the lobe of his ear and the pinch when Changbin drove the needle through. Hell, even now he can feel the ache of the single, asymmetrical piercing on his left ear right next to the initial piercing that he first got when he came to Seoul. Both are symbols of independence and autonomy. 

It stings when he touches it, but it’s nice to run his finger over as he watches the two of them on stage. Because when his finger brushes against the pink glitter heart stuck through his earlobe, red-warm pain radiates across the lobe of his ear and reminds him that this is real.    
  


Little jokes and references only understood by the three of them. Saturday mornings spent stuck in the cavernous place where two mattresses are pushed. These mornings are spent  wedged between Changbin and Han until two in the afternoon. This is real, and he’s catching up to Changbin and Han. 

_ January 1st, 2000  _

Only when the corners of his mouth ache from smiling does he realize. God only knows how long he's been standing at the edge of the stage with a slack jaw and dopey smile staring at Changbin and Han. The warm glow of being comfortable in one’s own skin is unconscious and automatic. Awareness is a slightly jarring interruption that is soothed over immediately by the warmth of that comfort. Chan would liken it to the way that Changbin brushes against him at the sink in the morning on his way to the shower or waking up on the edge of the bed facing the wall only to feel Han's arms wrap around him. The feeling of heightened self consciousness and quiet reacceptance, a blip on the radar of self consciousness, happens to him now. 

Changbin and Han never fail to captivate on stage no matter how many times he's watched them perform. Raw emotion caught between the two of them and transformed and tossed back to the audience like a question. 

Sweat upon their brow, Changbin's chest heaves with labored breath as his soul is put on display through verse. Han's shed his oversized sweater in favor of a sweat soaked undershirt. 

Changbin pulls the mic away from his face, bridge of the song allowing him to breathe. A minor key takes the bite off of the anger of Changbin's verse and brings in the melancholy just the way Changbin likes it. He should know. He composed the song himself in  _ their _ apartment in his underwear. Headphones on while Han and Changbin were sleeping. 

Although the stage is only elevated a few inches off of the floor, Han extends his hand to pull him upward onto the stage. 

Chan accepts and allows Han to pull him upward. Changbin thrusts the microphone into his hand. 

There is one verse left before the music ends and the crowd cheers. Cheers for Han. Cheers for Changbin. Cheers for him. 

There are lyrics that already exist. He's heard them perform the song a half dozen times.  _ Fuck  _ he even wrote some of them, but his head is as empty as their fridge at home right now. 

The verse that he's about to spit remains unwritten, and when it is spoken into existence these verbal directions detailing the serpentine path of emotions he's experiencing in this moment will be lost to adrenaline immediately. Their futures are riddled with uncertainty. No way of knowing if this will last a day or for the rest of their lives. 

But, Chan doesn't feel lost. 


End file.
